-The Hindu They will be involved in the exercise in panchayats other than their own Chennai: Beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) are going to be involved in carrying out social audit of works of the MGNREGS from April 1. To ensure that there is no conflict of interest, they will be engaged in the audit of village panchayats other than theirs. For each village panchayat, five persons...

-The Hindu Chennai: Aimed at benefiting over 1.3 crore agriculturists, land development activities for farming will be taken up shortly on lands belonging to the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes besides small and marginal farmers. As a prelude to this step, Gram Sabhas in 12,524 village panchayats met on Republic Day and approved the lists of the farmers identified by Rural Development and Agriculture Departments of the State governments. Assessment of requirements of the...

-The Economic Times The move to ease diversion of forest land for industrial use by the Prime Minister's Office faces further delay as the ministries of tribal affairs and environment want more time for consultations. A panel headed by principal secretary to the prime minister, Pulok Chatterjee, had decided to dilute the requirement of taking consent from the affected tribal population before diverting forest land. The committee, which submitted its report...

-The Hindu To address the rights issue and the skewed sex ratio, girl child-friendly policies get an extra thrust in the 12 Plan document, to be approved formally by this month-end The 12 Plan document of the Planning Commission, to be formally approved this month-end, has recommended setting up of a high level inter-ministerial committee on ‘Care and Protection of the Girl Child’ which will constitute the institutional mechanism for mobilising and...

-The Hindu Business Line Can you imagine many men who never donned domestic roles are now sharing household works in rural India? This is one of the findings of a national study, conducted on the impact of self help groups in the last two decades, which Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh has released here.   Finance and managment The study, conducted by the National Network of Enabling Self Movement (Enable) in eight States...