-The Indian Express In a last-ditch effort to stop moves that it says will "entirely defeat the purpose" of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), the Ministry of Tribal Affairs has strongly objected to the revised guidelines for forest clearance that the government is in a hurry to notify. Prepared by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) after a push from the Prime Minister's Office, the new rules will ease the...
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Ending the above-poverty line scam -Jean Drèze and Reetika Khera
-Livemint.com Bringing the bulk of the population under a common system of entitlements is the way to reduce leakages The reliability of the public distribution system (PDS) has improved greatly in a number of states that have a reputation for endemic corruption. In states such as Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, where leakages were as high as 50-90% in 2004-05, they are now of the order of 10-25%. This pattern, based on National...
More »Panchayat schemes off Centre table -Basant Kumar Mohanty
-The Telegraph New Delhi: Eight central schemes have been left to states following the Centre's decision to raise their share of federal taxes, but this has left the Union panchayati raj ministry almost jobless. The schemes de-linked from central support are: Backward Regions Grant Funds (BRGF) of the panchayati raj ministry; Rajiv Gandhi Panchayat Sashaktikaran Abhiyaan (RGPSA) of the panchayati raj ministry; E-governance...
More »Medha Patkar, social activist, interviewed by Gargi Parsai
-The Hindu Interview with social activist Medha Patkar on why she opposes the Land Bill proposed by the Centre Social activist Medha Patkar has been in the forefront of the struggle for the rights and rehabilitation of project-displaced populations for over two decades, and has relentlessly pursued the formulation of a national rehabilitation policy. She spoke to Gargi Parsai at the site of the agitation in Delhi about the pitfalls in the...
More »Participatory Budget knocking on Delhi's door
Quite opposite to the top-down model of budgeting, the newly elected Aam Aadmi Party-led Government in Delhi has decided to go for a 'citizen-centric' budget planning at 'mohalla'-level for the fiscal year 2015-16. Drawing lessons from the success stories of participatory budgeting conducted at municipal-level in cities like Porto Alegre (Brazil), the AAP-led Delhi Government has decided to launch this form of decentralized budgeting on a pilot basis in a...
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