In Greater Noida, farmers resist fiercely attempts to take over their land for the Yamuna expressway and a hi-tech city. IT is a tale of two worlds, one in the present and the other in the future; one living and breathing and toiling away in parts of the National Capital Region and the other beautifully blueprinted and waiting to be willed into reality by the government and its elites in...
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A frenzied media fails to use the RTI Act by Manu Moudgil
“Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.” This quote by US President Ronald Reagan summarises the significance attributed to facts, figures and data and the need to make them freely available across servers and bandwidths. In this age of internet and mobile networks, the amount of information available to us is far more than...
More »Funds freeze on two districts by Amit Gupta
The Centre has held back Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme funds earmarked for Latehar and Bokaro in LIGht of recent murders of a labourer and activist, but agreed to release dues for 2011-12 fiscal for other districts of Jharkhand, a state already under the scanner for poor implementation of the flagship job scheme. State MGNREGS commissioner Ajoy Kumar Singh, who is in Delhi to pursue the matter, told The...
More »Crossing borders below the radar, and making it back by Malia Politzer
Gary Singh’s abduction ordeal illustrates the dangers faced by those who rely on smugglers to make their way overseas One day in 2006, 18-year-old Gubachan “Gary” Singh, an illegal immigrant in Manila, Philippines, was on his way to work when he was approached by four stocky Filipinos. One pulled out a gun, pressing the barrel into the small of his back, while another blindfolded him and shoved him into a van....
More »Unique number delay for lack of introducers by Jaideep Deogharia
Though the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has prioritized enrolling people who have no valid proof of their identity and worked out a mechanism called the "introducer based verification system", it came to LIGht in camps organized in the state that there are few takers for this system. An authorized person with a valid UID number can introduce a person with no documentary evidence. Commissioner NREGA, Ajay Kumar Singh, who...
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