-The Telegraph The state rural development department has asked for a report from the Latehar district administration on Wednesday’s death of a 14-year-old girl while she was working in a well being constructed under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). In a letter issued today after The Telegraph carried a report highlighting the tragedy and its overall implications on the tardy implementation of the Centre’s job scheme in Jharkhand, rural...

-IANS Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Friday expressed concern that the government's Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) is being seen as a "token sanitation campaign" and rued that women were demanding mobile phones but not toilets.  "Women demand mobile phones, they are not demanding toilets... Sanitation is the much more difficult issue," Ramesh said at the launch of Asia-Pacific Regional MDGs (Millenium Development Goals) Report 2011-12.  Ramesh said women's self-help groups (SHGs) should...

The data show that rural families simply cannot subsist on farm incomes alone There must be a bit of Gandhi in all of us because often our idea of India ultimately boils down to the kisan as the standard bearer of the lakhs of villages that comprise India. Perhaps that is why I tend to look for the signs of transformation in the lives of Indian farmers. The changes in...

The Centre plans to remove the distinction between below poverty line (BPL) and above poverty line (APL) and bring all the needy under the Total Sanitation Scheme (TSC). It would be renamed as Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan to send home the message that its implementation would be a people's movement rather than a bureaucratic programme. The new scheme will be part of the structural changes to be introduced from April. Union Minister...

-Rediff.com    The last six to seven years of the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar has not seen any significant increase in Maoist violence, which nevertheless continues to take a toll of lives and government property. According to figures compiled by the state police headquarters, in 2008, the Maoists destroyed three government buildings, blasted railway tracks at six places, besides two private buildings, torched five JCB machines used in road construction and 12...