-The Times of India KOLKATA: While the country celebrates the seventh anniversary of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), Bengal continues to be one of the poor performers. The Paschimbanga Khet Majdoor Union alleges that a group of vested interests, "comprising landed farmers, industrialists and a section of the intelligentsia" were working in tandem to subvert the positives of NREGA in the state. The union, which has criticized both the...

-Outlook Aam Admi Party convenor Arvind Kejriwal today persisted with his attack on Delhi government for the second successive day, accusing it of irregularities in Delhi Jal Board and effecting 18-fold hike in the water tariff in last nine years. "Our water bill, which was Rs 74 nine years ago has swollen to Rs 1,375, which is an 18-fold growth. This is due to corruption in water distribution system under which a...

-Outlook Caste has nothing to do with graft. Even so, Nandy must be heard. Forging a link, however tenuous, between caste and corruption is akin to saying  that the average Indian male  has sex on his mind, caste and communalism in his heart and indigestion in his tummy. That was an irreverent response to the sweeping statement made by the “ageing enfant terrible” of Indian sociology, Ashis Nandy, during a discussion...

-The Hindu MGNREGA records manipulated; workers’ wages siphoned off from accounts Rankikalan (Jharkhand): At noon on Tuesday last, a dozen men gathered on the banks of the Auranga near Rankikalan village in Latehar district. As they performed the dashmirites, the wailing from the huts in the village continued. Bhuiatoli village had lost 23 men, women and children when the truck in which they were returning to the village after working on landlords’...

-The Hindu GADCHIROLI: A week ago, six militants of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) were shot dead by commandos of Maharashtra’s anti-Naxal C-60 force at Govindgaon, a village in Gadchiroli district. Shankar Anna alias Munneshwar Jagatu Lakada, 43, was leading the Maoist squad that organised a meeting on the night of January 19 at Govindgaon, villagers say. Gadchiroli police say Shankar Anna was secretary of the CPI (Maoist) Aheri area committee and...