With nearly 800 million people unable to read or write, the United Nations today marked International Literacy Day with a warning that illiteracy undermines efforts to eliminate a host of social ills such as poverty and sickness and threatens the very stability of nations. “The costs are enormous,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a message. “Illiteracy exacerbates cycles of poverty, ill-health and deprivation. It weakens communities and undermines democratic processes through...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Useful Spectacle by Ashok Guha
In the current hullabaloo about the lok pal bill and the Anna agitation, one question has frequently been raised, both by protagonists of the Congress and the government and by constitutionalists and legal experts: however laudable the goals of Anna and his supporters, aren’t the methods adopted by them illegitimate? Doesn’t a fast unto death amount to blackmail of the legislature? Isn’t it an attempt by the unelected to usurp...
More »New law to try corrupt NREGS officials
-The Times of India The state government on Friday Promulgated an ordinance to launch punitive action against officials and others found guilty of corruption in implementation of welfare schemes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme ( NREGS). Rural development minister Manikya Vara Prasad said Rs 30 crore of the Rs 100 crore misappropriated in the last five years was recovered till date. The minimum punishment under the proposed law...
More »NGO helps adivasis with alternative plan for forest conservation by Dipannita Das
City-based NGO Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group, in association with other forums and NGOs have helped the tribal populations in the Biligiri Rangaswamy temple sanctuary, also a tiger reserve, in Karnataka, to come up with an alternative community-based plan for conservation, livelihood and management of forest. So far, out of around 62 settlements, 25 in this protected area have got the community forest rights. According to experts, similar processes should also be...
More »Govt ‘glossed over’ governor doubts
-The Telegraph The Raj Bhavan secretariat had expressed “procedural doubts” about the now-discarded Singur ordinance on Thursday and the governor had signed it only after an assurance from minister Partha Chatterjee that the law department had not come across any potential red flags, Writers’ Buildings sources said today. The government had to drop the ordinance yesterday because it is unconstitutional to Promulgate one while the Assembly is in session. It decided...
More »