Seventy-year-old Dau Singh is dancing to the tune of a parody music being belted out in the background by a group of people sitting on the pavement. The song urges people to write letters to their brethren and come there to join the fight. "Come on mazdoors, get into the act to get what you deserve," urges the song. The venue is the Statue Circle in Jaipur, where hundreds of...

The government is keen on forging a partnership with IIMs, IITs and other select institutes for augmenting professional resource support to its rural development programmes like NREGA. As part of efforts to evolve such a framework, the Ministry of Rural Development has invited representatives from various professional institutes including IIMs and IITs to participate in a workshop organised by it in Udaipur district of Rajasthan tomorrow, a ministry official said. Union Minister...

This is with reference to the report “Centre to step in Rajasthan MNREGS wage row” (Oct. 10) which cites the Union Rural Development Ministry Secretary Mr. B.K. Sinha as stating that the State Government of Rajasthan will have to pay the prescribed wage rate under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act/Scheme (MGNREGA) to workers under MGNREGA. This has not communicated the Union Secretary's point of view correctly. The...

Nikhil Dey, convener of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information, has been in the forefront of the RTI movement. He speaks to  Bharat Dogra  about the achievements of the RTI and the challenges ahead: How do you assess the overall impact of the RTI? Sceptics say corruption is increasing more than even before. What I can assure them is corruption would have been much higher without the RTI. In schemes...

Delhi is an anxious city this monsoon season, struggling to meet an onerous deadline. Preparations continue at a feverish pace for the 19th Commonwealth Games (CWG), which will bear down on the Indian metropolis October 3-14, along with some 8,500 athletes from the 71 states and territories that were once part of the British Empire. Around-the-clock construction and spells of heavy monsoon rain have turned Delhi into a swirl of mud...