Several undeserving candidates have allegedly been allotted money in a Murshidabad pocket under a central housing scheme for below-poverty-line people. Many residents of Gangadhari village in Naoda have been enlisted as Beneficiaries of the Indira Awaas Yojana even though they already have a house and farmland, depriving homeless people. Villagers owing allegiance to the Congress lodged a complaint with the block development officer of Naoda last month accusing the RSP-run local Madhupur...

India’s decision-makers seem to find it difficult to see that there are children in the country. Being unable to see them, they are unable to perceive that they are hungry. In an age when we are able to use euphemisms like ‘under-nutrition’, this is perhaps not surprising. But it is disgraceful none the less.   This country has a large population of children. Fortyone per cent of its total numbers. The national...

-The Times of India Government agencies fear that terror funds are flowing into the real estate sector, apart from a substantial part of the black money generated within the country finding its way into the housing industry. An assessment prepared by revenue intelligence agencies and reviewed by the finance minister recently reveals that the highest component of undisclosed money detected by the income tax department was from the real estate sector. Officials suspect...

MGNREGA 2.0 should really be MGNREGA 0.0 — it has been outdated from the start, five years ago It is a fact universally acknowledged that India is at a fiscal crossroads. It swerved quite significantly to populism over the last several years, and the consequences of this lurch are that the UPA’s own finance minister is (thankfully) losing sleep over the fiscal burden. More specifically, over the subsidy burden. As we all...

Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh wants to sidestep categories proposed under the food security law to make sure that the welfare impact of the legislation isn’t nullified because a count that’s central to it hasn’t been completed across large parts of the nation. Ramesh wants 25kg of foodgrain given every month to 75% of the rural poor and 50% of the urban poor at subsidized rates. The National Food Security Bill, which...