Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has proposed social audits for the centre's big-ticket welfare programmes running under different ministries, on the lines of the scrutiny that he recently mandated for the flagship rural jobs scheme. "The concept has the potential to revolutionise the system. If we can have social audits for three-four major social sector schemes, it will change the way the country functions," Ramesh said. If the proposal is...

-The Times of India   Activist Aruna Roy-led National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) has opposed the government's grievance redressal bill saying it was "seriously compromised" and would be ineffective in providing weaker sections of society with any relief in its present form. NCPRI's stinging critique of the bill is significant because Roy is an influential member of the National Advisory Council that functions under UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. The government...

Civil society groups on Tuesday came out strongly against the Centre’s draft National Food Security Bill, which has not incorporated the National Advisory Council’s suggestion for providing maternity entitlements to about 15 crore women in the informal (non-Government) sector, as in the Central Government, thereby denying food security (breast feeding) to infants.  Similarly, the current legal guarantee of 'hot cooked meals' for children attending anganwadis has been diluted by providing the...

-DNA    Drilling into government’s draft of grievance redress bill, National Advisory Council (NAC) member Aruna Roy and her colleagues from National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI) on Wednesday demanded some critical changes in the proposed law to make it more useful to a common man. They also vowed to start a “public movement” in case government refused to pay heed to them. Congress led-United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government is already...

The UID in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act may simplify the administrator's task, but will not make a poor man's task any easier. EVERY time there is talk of tinkering with the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), it is time we recalled how and why the Act came into existence. The passage of the NREGA was Parliament's response to a people's movement that grew out of the recognition and...