Mock drill was trigger, official insensitivity drives resentment against the nuclear power project St. Lourdes Church at Idinthakarai, a fishing village located about 80 km south of the Tirunelveli town, is an important place of worship for the local people. Of late, the Church, which is over 100 years old, is in the news for a different reason: it serves as the focal point for the protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear...

-The Times of India   More than 8,000 tribals, armed with traditional weapons, participated in a demonstration organized in front of the office of the Balangir collector on Friday. They criticized the government for taking no action against fake tribal certificate holders. They went round the Balangir town in a rally before coming to the collector office. Security was beefed up in the town in view of the agitation. The agitators submitted a...

It's 10 years since he saw his parents and 10 others being burnt and electrocuted in front of him in Sardarpura, but the horror hasn’t left Gulam Ali Akbar Sheikh. Like the other victims, he migrated from his native village to Satnagar in Mehsana district following the massacre, but the fear has stayed with him. Sheikh remembers that they had just finished their dinner when the riot started around 9.30 pm....

-The Economic Times   The government's flagship rural employment programme may soon get a dedicated legal setup that would enable state governments to fast-track conviction of erring officials and Panchayat heads implementing the scheme. The rural development ministry, which implements the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) through state departments and Panchayats, is going to approach the Supreme Court to facilitate setting up of NREGA mobile courts in every district....

Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday gave a thumbs-up to the independent social audit mechanism adopted by the Narendra Modi-led Gujarat government for the NREGS. He brushed aside reservations expressed by a member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC), the apex monitoring agency for the rural job guarantee scheme, while endorsing Gujarat’s model. “Let there be multiplicity of mechanisms. They need to be independent and transparent. It can be...