The enduring memory that he has of his father is when the police took him away from the dinner table as the family had just sat down to eat their food. “He had barely put the first morsel in his mouth when the police came to pick him up. After that day five years ago, it will be today that the entire family will again have food together,” 11-year-old Osama Raees...

After being mired in controversies across the nation over multi-crore scams, the MGNREGA scheme hasn’t quite made headway in Bulandshahr district’s Anupshahr yet, say Bhamati Sivapalan and Yamini Deenadayalan “MGNREGA is a flop in Uttar Pradesh,” extended NGO worker Manish Sharma, as small talk, at the block development office of Anupshahr in the Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh. Despite having been in force since 2005, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment...

Government proposes to provide basic insurance coverage to an estimated 43 crore unorganized workers Furthering the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s objective of inclusive growth, the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi will discuss ways of bringing India’s unorganized workers under the social security net in its meeting on 29 November. A new NAC working group on social security is working on draft recommendations that will seek to...

Shweta Bhatt, wife of suspended Gujarat IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, is undaunted by what lies ahead in their fight against the State administration. Taking on the Narendra Modi government, she said the State people wanted “a change” and were not afraid to speak against the system. “When my husband decided to speak out, we knew there will be consequences; there were and we faced them. And we know it is not...

-The Hindu   Justice Markandey Katju, Chairman, Press Council of India, has issued the following clarification on his critical observations of the Indian media.   I have expressed my views relating to the media in several T.V. interviews I gave as well as in my articles in some newspapers. However, many people, including many media people, wanted clarification and amplification of some of the issues I had raised. Many media people (including several T.V. channels)...