The District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), Vellore has adopted a cluster approach in undertaking various works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in order to enable more villagers to get employment, according to N. SRInivasan, Project Officer of the DRDA. Talking to newspersons at the Alangulam irrigation tank in Melappulam village panchayat in Arcot panchayat union where the work of deepening of the tank under MGNREGS was...

A Delhi court will frame charges on March 1 against six persons, including four MCD officials, for their alleged role in the Commonwealth Games (CWG) street lighting scam. One of the 10 Games-related scams being probed by the CBI, it caused a loss of about Rs 1.5 crore to the government. In an order issued on Friday, Special CBI Judge Pradeep Chadha said that prima facie, a case was made out...

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is likely to run into a debate on public health policy after the Planning Commission moved to nix a proposal to include healthcare in the list of public entitlements such as education and food. Central to the proposal—initiated by a high-level expert group (HLEG) headed by K. SRInath Reddy, a leading advocate of preventive cardiology and president of the Public Health Foundation of India—was the...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has blamed US-based NGOs for whipping up a campaign against the Russian-aided Kudunkulam atomic power station in Tamil Nadu, causing a major setback to the project. Singh, in an interview to the American journal 'Science' being published on Friday said, "The atomic energy programme has got into difficulties because these NGOs mostly, I think, based in the US, don't appreciate the need for our country to increase...

While welcoming the report of the High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage for India for its comprehensive vision and many well-conceived recommendations, this article focuses on the conditions needed for its promise to bear fruit. Towards this, it explores the political dimension, which comprises the forces and interests that come into play to shape and reconfigure administrative policy and its implementation.   We are grateful to Anand Zachariah and Susie...