On a day the Bokaro district administration went on an overdrive to tighten the noose around unscrupulous MGNREGS contractors, the state government claimed in the Assembly that the death of worker Subal Mahto wasn’t remotely connected to rampant corruption in the Centre’s flagship rural job scheme. Reprimanded by Union rural development secretary B.K. Sinha over the recent killings of the Bokaro labourer and MGNREGS crusader Niyamat Ansari, the government today made...

The amounts of various radioactive releases into the environment are unknown, as are the winds and other factors that determine how radioactivity will disperse. The different radioactive materials reported at the nuclear accidents in Japan range from relatively benign to extremely worrisome. The central problem in assessing the degree of danger is that the amounts of various radioactive releases into the environment are now unknown, as are the winds and other...

Often criticised for lapses in the past, Uttar Pradesh is now credited for it's initiative to implement the Centrally-sponsored Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme successfully in the state. "I could see the increasing participation of people in it (MGNREGS) and the openness to reforms on the part of the government," said a Planning Commission member, Mihir Shah after attending a state-level discussion held here on Wednesday titled 'MGNREGS in...

Prof Abhijit Sen, member of the Planning Commission, discusses Budget provisions related to the agriculture sector in an interview with Rajesh Bhayani and Sanjeeb Mukherjee. Sen feels, futures trading in essentials commodities like wheat and rice should not be allowed. According to him, India should follow China in having an agency for procuring commodities from the global market. There seems to a renewed focus in this Budget on ancillary items of...

India’s Supreme Court has questioned clearances to industries on the basis of environment impact assessments (EIAs) carried out by private consultants in the pay of project proponents. A special bench of the court led by Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia, that is hearing a petition challenging approvals granted to the French company Lafarge to mine limestone, likened the practice to "paying the piper to call the tune." Kapadia’s bench noted that every report...