Farmers will not have to cough up any tax upfront on the compensation money they receive for their land acquired by the government. The rural development ministry has clarified after complaints that in absence of clear rules the harshest provisions were being imposed. "We have issued orders that all compensation money for agricultural land acquisitions in both urban and rural areas should be made without any deductions," said an official in...

The new rural development minister wants to use technology to force states to make payments. Critics suggest that he should fix existing problems first. Jairam Ramesh is not afraid of stirring things up. Sixty days into his stint as the new Rural Development Minister, Ramesh, he has unveiled what he calls NREGA 2.0, a reform package that he feels would make the Rs 40,000 crore programme actually work. Ramesh has put together...

-PTI   Seeking reform in Madrasas, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit today called upon minority communities to focus on modern education and exhorted them to take optimum benefit of the Right to Education Act. Describing the RTE as a major initiative of the UPA government to bring about reform in the education sector, Dikshit said minority communities must take full advantage of the legislation and make their children excel in every field. "Union Government has...

A Tata DoCoMo television commercial that shows a maid trying to steal a cellphone has enraged domestic helps who have threatened street protests if the company does not apologise with another advertisement. An organisation for domestic helps in Delhi, the Domestic Workers’ Forum, first objected to the ad, part of a series of eight commercials which was launched on August 30. The commercial shows a maid stealing a mobile phone and hiding...

The Madras High Court on Friday upheld a notification of the Centre issued in June this year exempting the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from the purview of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. In its order dismissing a public interest litigation petition challenging the exemption, the First Bench consisting of the Chief Justice M.Y. Eqbal and Justice T.S. Sivagnanam said that indisputably, CBI was investigating several cases of larger public...