The forest department has got a target of planting over 2 crore saplings in the year 2011-12. However, it is the rural areas that may get far more saplings when compared to the city areas. Reason: The funds for plantation in 74 forest divisions come through Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). Thus, rural workers are engaged for plantation exercise, most of which is consequently, carried out in rural...

Farmers with irrigated fields in Punjab and Haryana will start sowing cotton in a fortnight. Agriculture department officials estimate a 10% to 15% increase in acreage this season as cotton has become more lucrative than paddy, basmati and pulses. Government's paddy procuring agencies and basmati exporters don't think that the staple's production will take a hit. "We estimate the area under cotton across the country to increase by 15% and prices will...

Why are the erstwhile RTI campaigners so alarmed five years after it became law? Why so many dharnas, rallies, conventions and hunger-strikes all over again? Part of the reason is that the silent revolution that the RTI has spawned needs to be defended from surreptitious alterations and manipulations, and partly because the RTI activists are being threatened, harassed and assaulted by the corrupt and the powerful, often with the connivance...

The Food Corporation of India (FCI) paid additional Rs 4.27 crore to the state government in 2008-09 and 2009-10 towards gunny bags for procurement of paddy. This has been revealed in the latest audit report procured by the Council of RTI Activists through the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Council president Rohit Sabharwal and general secretary Arvind Sharma said though the audit department had asked the FCI to get this payment...

This book discusses a new poverty agenda for Asia and the role of social policies in economic transformation and reducing poverty. The poverty-reduction agenda is well known. So is the debate over poverty. No one disputes the fact that poverty of income (or expenditure, as countries such as India do not collect household data on income) is an imperfect measure of poverty, as there are non-income dimensions, too. Consequently, we...