-The Hindu Concerned over the glaring increase in the number of beggars across all major cities and towns in the country, the Centre is now focussing on preventing begging. To begin with, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has asked the States and Union Territories to inform the Centre about schemes and welfare measures taken by them to check beggary. No information on implementation "Although various State governments and Union Territories have enacted...

-The Hindu     The UPA government's response to questions on Aadhaar's voluntariness continues to be marked by ‘intentional ambiguity.' Compulsion by stealth is used to camouflage the use of Aadhaar as a neo-liberal policy tool "This debate is ... about our specific disagreement on the meaning of that one word," i.e. "the Government now seek to persuade us that ‘voluntary' actually means ‘compulsory'." That was Nick Clegg in the United Kingdom's House of Commons...

-The Indian Express The gangrape may have brought the tribal councils of this West Bengal district to notoriety, but it wasn't the first sexual abuse on their orders. What is more at play here though is growing outside interference in a region considered a vote bank, writes Madhuparna Das. On January 29 evening, 900 people of a village in Birbhum district's Labhpur block gathered near the hut of their headman. The hut,...

-Down to Earth UPA gives sops under MGNREGS to attract rural voters ahead of elections WITH most of its recent schemes struggling, a desperate UPA government is pinning its hopes on Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to win votes in 2014 elections. The government is overhauling the employment scheme that helped it return to power in 2009 for a reason. It touches the lives of over 55 per cent...

-The New Indian Express THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: While taking up farming, her family's means of support, Ramani Vengattu, a 47-year-old woman belonging to Kizhakkumbad, Kozhikode never thought that she could script success within a short period of time. At present, the lean but dynamic homemaker is a regular provider of green spinach to the Palayam vegetable market, Kozhikode. For good quality spinach leaves, the first name that comes to the mind of the natives...