Two-and-A-half years ago, Kandhamal was tagged as a “national shame”, after communal violence triggered by the killing of a Hindu seer left 38 people dead, with houses and churches burnt and vandalised, and thousands of people homeless. But on February 2, Kandhamal is set to get a different tag — one of “national pride” — as the Union Ministry of Rural Development awards it for being one of the top 10...

Even though the Central Government agreed to link the wages paid under MG-NREGA to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL), it shied away from paying statutory minimum wages in various states of India. Their logic for this: Lack of clarity on who will bear the extra financial burden—the Centre or the states? A letter from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to UPA and NAC Chairperson Sonia Gandhi dated 31...

So why is the UPA hell-bent on killing its unique success story: the NREGA? Here's the inside narrative of the conspiracy. It took 47 days of a protest sit-in at Jaipur to make the state budge(1). It's notable that the objective of this protracted protest was not to coerce the Rajasthan government for an extra share of the state's resources, but to hold the government accountable to the Constitution and its...

Like doctors and lawyers, teachers may soon be subject to a “code of professional ethics”, which includes clauses for disciplinary action over corporal punishment, private tuitions and other “anti-community” activities. If accepted by the government, the proposed code would apply to school teachers across the country, from primary to secondary and senior secondary levels, and across government as well as private schools, with the aim of restoring “dignity and integrity” to...

Bengal is among three states that have opposed a human resource development ministry proposal to set up a national watchdog to monitor school textbooks adopted by education boards. The other two dissenting states are Gujarat and Orissa. Fourteen states and Union territories have supported the idea, though. The ministry had sought the opinion of the states and the Union territories on the proposal to set up a National Textbook Council (NTC) that...