-Scroll.in Panchayats have no funds to hire and pay hordes of workers forced to return home from cities. Demonetisation has exposed the fragile state of the government’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. In Uttar Pradesh, in particular, an ever-burgeoning army of migrant labourers returning to their villages for lack of work in the cities, as a direct result of the cash crisis, has led to a mad scramble for employment...
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Cooking together to cope in waterless Bundelkhand -Chitra Narayanan
-The Hindu Business Line Community kitchens forge unity in drought-hit villages It’s nearing 6 pm as we enter Kadesara Khurd, a dry drought-affected village in Lalitpur district of arid Bundelkhand. The main lane of the village wears a deserted look and several houses are padlocked. An emaciated cow is sprawled on the doorstep of one of the abandoned homes. “Over 200 people from this village have migrated to Bhopal, Delhi, Lucknow and...
More »Who stole my broadband? -Thomas K Thomas & Pratim Ranjan Bose
-The Hindu Business Line BusinessLine goes to villages, including those visited in 2014, to understand the progress of the ambitious National Optical Fibre Network. Unused infrastructure and low awareness tell a story of missed links In one corner of the Ramnagar village panchayat office, in Panisagar block of Tripura, is a defunct four-year-old computer. The machine, connected with a 10 mbps broadband line was supposed to bring digital services to this remote...
More »Victims of the numbers game -Vidya Krishnan
-The Hindu More than a year after 13 women died in a mass sterilisation camp in Chhattisgarh, it is far from clear whether lessons have been learnt or justice done Sixteen months after a mass sterilisation camp conducted by the government of Chhattisgarh resulted in 13 deaths and 65 injuries, viscera reports — from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Ramanthapur, Hyderabad, and from the Central Drugs Laboratory, Kolkata, to go with...
More »Touched by sight of barefoot schoolkids, Jalore collector takes up cause -Ashish Mehta
-The Times of India JAIPUR: Moved by the sight of some students coming to school barefoot in the chilly December weather, Jalore collector Jitendra Kumar Soni, a young IAS officer, started an innovative scheme aimed at providing free shoes to downtrodden and deprived children. Christened as 'Charan Paduka Yojna', the scheme aims at distributing shoes to nearly 25,000 school kids before the Republic Day this year. Soni, who hails from Dhanasar village near...
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