The rural development ministry has proposed several changes in the rural job guarantee programme to ensure timely payment of wages and eradicate graft at a time when the Congress party-led ruling alliance has come under fire for poor governance and its failure to tackle corruption. The ministry has listed nine challenges to the proper functioning of the programme and proposed possible modifications in a note. The challenges include ensuring demand-driven legal...

Around the time Anna Hazare ended his fast at Ramlila Maidan and declared "electoral reforms" as his next agenda, 15 different organizations under the aegis of "Forum For Good Governance" kicked off a daylong deliberation on the same issue. Eminent members of the judiciary, political class, civil society and bureaucracy participated in the national conference on the 'urgency of electoral and political party reforms'. The success of Anna Hazare's anti-graft movement...

The National Campaign for People’s Right to Information has rejected Anna Hazare’s Jan Lokpal bill and said it had sent its version of the proposed anti-graft law to the parliamentary standing committee that is examining the Centre’s draft. At a media interaction today, NCPRI members Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander, who are also part of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC), emphasised the importance of the standing committee which, they...

Days after the death of 40-year-old Moreshwar Sathe in police firing during an agitation in Maval in Pune district against a pipeline project, two conflicting versions have emerged on not just how he was killed but also the number of bullets that had hit him. When The Indian Express visited Sathe’s village Shivane in Maval on Friday, eyewitnesses said he was shot at with a revolver by a police inspector after...

-Express News Service   As the Parliamentary Standing Committee starts its meetings to debate the Lokpal Bill and Anna Hazare’s team meets MPs, the National Campaign for Peoples’ Rights for Information (NCPRI) has launched its strongest broadside ever against the government as well as the non-governmental members of the drafting committee on the Bill for their inability to stick to their promise of ‘pre-legislative consultation’. Aruna Roy, a prominent member of the Sonia...