The government is keen on forging a partnership with IIMs, IITs and other select institutes for augmenting professional resource support to its rural development programmes like NREGA. As part of efforts to evolve such a framework, the Ministry of Rural Development has invited representatives from various professional institutes including IIMs and IITs to participate in a workshop organised by it in Udaipur district of Rajasthan tomorrow, a ministry official said. Union Minister...

Public uproar over 20 suicides in two months has forced the Andhra Pradesh government to act to regulate micro-finance Institutions. On October 14, the state government brought an ordinance making it compulsory for MFIs to register themselves, declare the effective rate of interest they charge, ensure that no security is sought for loans and no coercion is used for recovery. Non-compliance will be punished with a three-year prison term and a...

Indigenous people are entitled to their own Institutions and self-governing structures to enable them to manage their own affairs and ensure that the development process is aligned with their own cultural patterns, values and customs, a United Nations independent expert says in a report. “In the light of the extreme disadvantages that indigenous peoples have typically faced across a range of social and economic indicators, there are particular concerns… that must...

The government will have to invest around Rs 5 lakh crore to achieve its target of increasing the higher education enrolment rate from the current 14 per cent to 30 per cent by 2020, a think tank has estimated. The National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) has prepared a concept paper projecting the expected number of youths to be enrolled in higher and technical education by 2020 and the...

The Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has given clearance to the department of atomic energy to set up a neutrino observatory  in Bodi West Hills reserved forest in Theni district in south Tamil Nadu. However, the approval is subject to conditions that the project does not entail cutting down trees or causing damage to the forest cover. The MoEF  has also insisted on measures to minimize the effect...