The scheme has reduced rural migration and promoted financial inclusion, but needs to create more durable assets. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) – the only government social welfare scheme named after the other Gandhi, not belonging to Nehru-Gandhi family – has recently completed five years. The performance of the scheme, considered a major pillar of UPA government's strategy of inclusive growth, has been a matter of debate. The...

700 million Indians have cell phones, but 638 million still don’t have access to proper sanitation. At this year’s South Asian Conference on Sanitation, social solutions to the problem were discussed, including “naming and shaming” and the CLTS programme which gets villagers to map the open areas where they defecate There can hardly be a bigger taboo than sanitation when it comes to the government, bureaucracy or even the people...

Extreme poverty and clamour for firewood have forced some people in Nayagram into extreme occupations. One such is gathering kolmipoka, an insect with medicinal value After walking almost 30km along rutted roads since the morning, middle-aged Bonchu Nayek returns to his humble home, a two-room hut, as darkness descends on Nayagram—one of West Bengal’s poorest villages—with his day’s earning of Rs10. Nayek, whose forefathers were hunters, belongs to the Lodha-Sabar tribe. With...

India's Supreme Court has granted bail to leading public health specialist and human rights activist, Dr Binayak Sen. In December a court in the central state of Chhattisgarh sentenced to life in prison for helping Maoist rebels. The lower court had found him guilty of carrying messages and setting up bank accounts for the rebels, who are active in large parts of India. Rights groups in India and abroad had called on the...

Bang on schedule, a few hours before the Chennai Super Kings took on the Kolkata Knight Riders, word leaked out that the UPA would give in to Anna Hazare. Hordes, by which I mean dozens, celebrated at India Gate, by which I mean that they held ice cream in one hand and candles in the other. The Leaders of the Revolution — Hazare, Baba Ramdev and Anupam Kher — could...