Following the intervention of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the Orissa government has banned the practice of “bartan” system under which upper caste families extract work from barbers and washermen during important family occasions in return for just 15 kg of paddy for the whole year. Thanks to the efforts of petitioner Baghambar Patnaik, since 2006, the age-old practice has ended with the Panchayat Raj Department issuing the notification...

A ward member in Vilappil Panchayat in Thiruvananthapuram was allegedly gifted a gold bangle by the women engaged in National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in her ward. A male member in one of the adjacent wards received gifts ranging from a gold ring to footwear. All as thanksgiving for work offered to the women under NREGS. This is just one of the many shocking revelation s which were revealed in...

The Centre’s flagship project Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), in which it it mandatory to employ at least 33 per cent women of its total work force, has become a victim of male bias in Uttar Pradesh. Against guidelines for the scheme, aimed at empowering women through ensuring their share in income, on an average only 18 per cent women are getting employment in the most populated state...

While other Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Ministers are in the limelight for all the wrong reasons, Jayant Patil is trying to make a difference in Maharashtra. Divested of his finance portfolio which went to Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, Mr. Patil, now Rural Development Minister, has embarked on an ambitious programme of tree plantation and rural sanitation, combined with planned development of villages for the first time. In a whirlwind tour...

More than a hundred officials from various government and non government agencies observed a minute’s silence to pay tribute to slain Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGREGS) activist Niyamat Ansari at a consultation session organised by Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) to discuss the challenges facing the scheme and its future today. Deputy chief minister Hemant Soren, who was the chief guest on the occasion, faced a barrage of...