The implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 has created controversy in West Bengal. The gram sabha, the basic unit in the process of forest rights recognition, has been replaced by the gram sansad, denoting the village level constituency under the panchayati raj system. This has been followed by contiguous arrangements as well as initiatives which are inconsistent with the Act....

Small and marginal farmers have reason to cheer, as the Central government has decided to construct small tanks, wells and even horticulture plantations in their fields under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). Sources in the divisional commissionerate said the government has amended the act to include even small and marginal farmers belonging to backward community, including SC/ST, especially those holding farms smaller than two acres. These farmers will...

Former Union Panchayat Raj Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, lately in the news for denouncing the Commonwealth Games, is aiming his guns much closer to the UPA government’s heart, at the way it is implementing the flagship National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). He is joining forces with like-minded critics of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) such as economist-actvist Jean Dreze to drive home the fact that its basic promises...

The fall of Ram Babu Kateliya, 60-year-old farmer from Kateliya village of Mathura district, was as fast as his meteoric rise within the past ten days. General Secretary of Kisan Sangharsh Samiti, an apolitical organisation, Kateliya shot into limelight after his arrest in Tappal tehsil of Aligarh while leading a farmers' agitation demanding high compensation for farmers whose land has been acquired for construction of a township. Three villagers lost...

Governor M..H. Farook today declared eight more districts as drought-hit, bringing the entire state in the parched bracket ahead of a central team visit. With this, the memorandum of demands to be forwarded to the Union government, seeking financial assistance to mitigate the effects of drought, will be redesigned. It is now pegged at around Rs 3,000 crore against the earlier Rs 2,157 crore. An eight-member central team, led by managing director...