While the rest of Punjab has performed poorly under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Faridkot district is setting an example. As part of a project to clear all link roads of encroachments, the district will employ some 30,000 villagers under the MGNREGA. This scheme was kicked off on Tuesday at Ramoowala village by Deputy Commissioner Dr S Karuna Raju, who said, “the basis of this act is to...

A total of Rs 3,79,29,000 have been paid to the unskilled workers under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme MGNREGA so far in the state, said Union Minister for Rural Development Dr C P.Joshi informed Shantaram Naik MP in a written reply to the question asked by him in the Rajya Sabha on the subject. Minister said that at the time of commencement of the scheme wage rate in Goa...

Barack Obama's mention of Mahatma Gandhi as the man who made his presidency possible and his invocation of "a dalit", Ambedkar, as the author of the Constitution had the MPs in audience gushing that his words could boost the struggle for social justice like few statements can. PL Punia, chairman of the National Commission for SCs, said that "Obama identified himself with champions of dalit rights" which was unheard of for...

Every afternoon at about four, a slight woman named Runi slips out of the cramped, airless room that she shares with her husband and their sixteen children. She skirts the drainage ditch in front of the building, then walks toward the pile of hardened dung cakes that people in this slum on the edge of the northeastern Indian city of Patna use for fuel. Dressed in a bright-yellow sari shot...

The controversy over the refusal of Ministry of Rural Development to pay minimum wages under Mahatma Gandhi NREGA is now bothering even the Congress-ruled States including Andhra Pradesh which has sought the intervention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister K. Rosaiah has been forced to write to the Prime Minister in the wake of the MORD not complying with the orders of the A.P. High Court suspending the...