Days after the biggest Maoist attack, in which 76 security personnel were killed in Dantewada, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today asserted that firm action would be taken against those challenging the authority of the state, but, in a careful moderation, added that one could not overlook the fact that Left-wing extremism flourished in underdeveloped areas. Singh's observations on the Naxal issue came at a gathering of the country's top bureaucrats on...

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will move a step closer to the realisation of its poll promise to promulgate a food security law if the Planning Commission, as is expected, conditionally approves the findings of the poverty panel report estimating the number of poor in the country at its meeting on Saturday. In preparation, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia met senior government officials and some members of the...

The UPA government has betrayed its promise of inclusive growth over the years as a result of which poverty ratios have remained extremely high despite rapid economic growth, says Praful Bidwai. The new National Advisory Council must act urgently on nutritional security and public healthcare, he adds. The reconstitution of the National Advisory Council under Sonia Gandhi, announced by India’s United Progressive Alliance government, is good news. The original NAC died...

* Documentary evidence gathered by the Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC) from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Rajasthan points to large-scale embezzlement in nrega projects * Panchayats often furnish fake bills and fictitious companies have been floated to divert funds * Hundreds of crores are lost to this sort of leakage * The CAG, too, has pointed out  large-scale irregularities and corruption in the implementation of NREGA projects...

Even as the Right to Education came into effect on Thursday, the countdown began for lakhs of unrecognised schools across the country against whom action can be taken under the new law unless they get themselves regularized within the next three years. The task of enforcing this regularization will be humungous if studies indicating the proliferation of unrecognized schools are to be believed. In 2005, in a survey in seven...