-The Times of India   The state government on Friday promulgated an ordinance to launch punitive action against officials and others found guilty of corruption in implementation of welfare schemes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme ( NREGS). Rural development minister Manikya Vara Prasad said Rs 30 crore of the Rs 100 crore misappropriated in the last five years was recovered till date. The minimum punishment under the proposed law...

People’s body gram panchayat will be the new administrator for implementing the world's biggest social security programme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee, instead of government officials. In a new avatar, the government has approved new guarantees under MGNREGA including registration for job through a call centres, mandatory payment of wages within 15 days at the doorstep  and providing dedicated staff at gram panchayat to implement and monitor the scheme. The...

Land is the most important ingredient for the development of real estate and infrastructure. For quite some time now, land acquisition had become a contentious issue in the country, which has threatened not only the industrial development but also planned growth of cities in the country. In this backdrop, the central government's decision to introduce a land acquisition bill in the monsoon session of Parliament will go a long way...

Sections within civil society have reservations about Anna Hazare’s movement but the government’s failure to tap them may have lent credence to the impression that his group was speaking up for the entire nation. Although leaders like P. Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal have argued that no single group could claim to be the sole representative of civil society, the Centre has not seriously tried to open channels of communication with other...

Why we are doing this story     * Tribal lands are under pressure across India. In Orissa, they have been holding out against big corporates like Vedanta and Posco. *** From afar, the fumes rising from factory chimneys in Gujarat’s industrial belt make them seem like skyscrapers on fire. It’s a grey rust-and-chemicals stretch that they call, without irony, the Golden Corridor. It extends all the way from the north of Ahmedabad, through...