The National Advisory Council is still working on the amount of grain to be distributed to each family under the Food Security Act. It will hold consultations with ministries of rural development and food and the Planning Commission before it firms up its suggestions for the proposed legislation. The panel, which met on Monday, considered the economic cost of various options to meet the goal of food security. The NAC...

China has sought information on India’s poverty reduction programmes, including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, to beef up its own strategy. A Chinese delegation that met Union Rural Development Minister C P Joshi today said the way India has weathered the economic meltdown without suffering much damage, has led them to enquire into poverty reduction programmes like MGNREGA. The Chinese delegation led by representatives from the State Council Leading...

Members of the Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC), the government body for implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, have suggested that jobs be guaranteed round the year in Naxal-hit regions. The suggestion, made by one of the six working groups set up for improving the scope of the MNREGS, came up for discussion at Friday's CEGC meeting here. The group said that in drought prone areas and regions...

It's a Rs 50,000 crore annual business but those at the bottom of the supply chain -- mostly tribals -- make a mere Rs 4,000 crore out of it. The extraction of non-timber forest produce -- tuburs, leaves, seeds, plants and roots, besides other products from forest -- could soon become a bigger money-spinner for tribals. The government has set up a committee, which in three months will recommend how...

The Centre plans to open over 1,000 residential schools for girls in backward and remote areas as part of its plan to universalise education. The National Sample Survey has found out that over 81 lakh children aged 6 to 13 years remain out of school and that most of them are girls. The human resource development ministry has told the finance ministry it wants to set up 1,073 new Kasturba Gandhi Balika...