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...

-IANS   Eminent agriculture scientist and a member of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC), M.S. Swaminathan, has cautioned against the government's plan to replace subsidised food with cash under the proposed National Food Security Act (NFSA). "The government's plan to replace subsidised ration with cash under the public distribution system (PDS) is faulty. It will lead to low procurement and less production subsequently. This will be bad for Indian agriculture," Swaminathan...

The Seed Bill 2010 -- which stayed in controversy because its initial draft seemed to favour agri-business rather than the farmer -- is now ready to get debated and passed in the current session of Parliament. Despite consultations, first in a Parliamentary Standing Committee and later in an all party meeting, a large number of farmers’ unions, opposition parties and civil society groups believe that the Bill fails to protect...

-Express News Service   As the Parliamentary Standing Committee starts its meetings to debate the Lokpal Bill and Anna Hazare’s team meets MPs, the National Campaign for Peoples’ Rights for Information (NCPRI) has launched its strongest broadside ever against the government as well as the non-governmental members of the drafting committee on the Bill for their inability to stick to their promise of ‘pre-legislative consultation’. Aruna Roy, a prominent member of the Sonia...

IF YOU walked down the streets of Jantar Mantar in New Delhi between 3-5 August, you would see what TV cameras aren’t putting out on primetime news. Thousands of farmers from Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh to Rohtak in Haryana. On protest. Against the systematic grabbing of their land by various state governments across the political spectrum. On one side of the road, on large green carpets, are about 3,000 farmers,...