Even as Indians across the nation and the world are drumming up support for Anna Hazare's hunger strike against corruption, a small farmer of Pahanga gram panchayat under Niali block has resorted to the same path to get justice. The 56-year-old farmer, Bhramara Ojha, sat on hunger strike outside the collector's office on Friday demanding payment of his due wages for work he did under the NREGA scheme. The farmer alleged...

The government’s programme to usher in a green revolution in West Bengal, Assam, Orissa, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh will see a key change in the next financial year. The allocation of funds, which was more skewed towards West Bengal so far, will now shift towards eastern Uttar Pradesh, according to guidelines framed for implementing the scheme. Officials said this was largely because a new component of wheat had been...

Eighty labourers, both men and women, are at work at Thiruvanduthurai village in Tiruvarur district of Tamil Nadu, about 325 km south of Chennai. They are digging a pond - about an acre wide and six feet deep - funded under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, or MGNREGS. Outside the work perimeter, two middle aged men look on, worried. P. Murugan and K. Govindaraj are farmers from the...

Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has generated maximum employment opportunities in Haryana because of the maximum utilisation of fund allocated under the scheme by the state government . While reviewing the development works undertaken under the scheme at a special meeting at Jind financial commissioner and principal secretary, development and panchayats department P Raghavendra Rao said on Wednesday. Rao said that the state government had also constituted a high-level...

India's rural innovators have proved that ordinary people are indeed capable of extraordinary inventions. Despite many constraints -- lack of education and severe cash crunch -- most of them have succeeded in using technology cost-effectively to build ingenious products. A washing-cum-exercise machine, hand operated water lifting device, portable smokeless stove, automatic food making machine, solar mosquito killer, shock proof converter, a floating toilet soap are few of the products on display...