Administrative sanction for 593 works They include construction of libraries Rural infrastructure in Tirupur district will undergo a moderate transformation if the improvement plans conceptualised by the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) at around Rs. 20 crore for the current financial year materialises at the ground level. Official sources told The Hindu that as part of the project, administrative sanction had been accorded to 593 works in 45 panchayats at Rs. 9 crore...

When noted economist Jean Dreze visited Surguja in Chhattisgarh a decade ago, its utterly non-functional Public Distribution System (PDS) looked like especially “designed to fail.” The National Advisory Committee member has written in a recent article that the ration shop owners illegally sold the grain meant for the poor and “hunger haunted the land.” But that was then. The economist was pleasantly shocked to see the transformation this time. “Ten years...

Back in 2005, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), now called Mahatma Gandhi NREGS or MGNREGS, was offered as a tool to liberate Dalits and weaker sections in rural India by giving them employment. Five years down the line, a Union Ministry of Rural Development-sponsored investigation has found that the scheme has become “yet another instrument in the consolidation of the existing exploitative power structure”. The investigation report, which became available...

Participating in the second meeting of the Chief Ministers' Working Group on Food and Public Distribution here, Chattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh on Wednesday asked the Centre to make the public distribution system (PDS) universal in the Left-Wing Extremism-affected districts, as well as, all Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste families living in tribal areas to do away with “errors of exclusion.” Mr. Singh is a member of the working group, set...

Once lauded as a model state for implementation of MGNREGA — the flagship proGramme of the UPA government — the state is on the backfoot nowadays as far as the scheme is concerned. Even as the Opposition BJP and the ruling Congress try to extract political mileage out of sarpanches agitation, at stake is the very scheme that has not only reduced the migration of labourers to other states but...