-The Times of India It is universally recognised that for ensuring people's participation in governance and holistic development, the best instrumentality is local government. So when Parliament passed the 73rd Constitution Amendment Bill on December 23, 1992 to enshrine the essential features of panchayats in the Constitution, this was hailed as historic. But where do our panchayats stand 20 years after becoming institutions of self-government? A big issue before the founders of...

-Deccan Herald With just a little more than a year left before the nation goes to polls, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance Government has proposed to raise the allocation for rural development to Rs 80194 crore in 2013-14, although an amount of about Rs 21371 crore is estimated to be left unspent from the fund earmarked for the sector this year. The Ministry of Rural Development is likely to leave unutilized...

-DNA For a rural management institute working to uplift lives of the underpriviliged, absence of norms of reservation for scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST) is an irony. Or it seemed so to Union minister for rural development Jairam Ramesh, who was the chief guest at Saturday's convocation of the Institute of Rural Management (Irma), Anand. As he began the convocation address, Jairam asked Irma chairman Deep Joshi to enforce reservation...

-PTI Bhadoi (UP): A court here has issued non-bailable warrants against 19 policemen in a 31-year-old fake encounter case, officials said here on Saturday. Chief Judicial Magistrate Ram Swaroop Saroj on Friday issued non-bailable warrants against 19 policemen and fixed April 30 as the next date of hearing. The police claimed to have killed one Devendra Singh in an encounter in the Gopiganj area here on April 4, 1982. Later the State government, on...

-The Hindustan Times Far from the neatly trimmed lawns of India Gate that so often reverberate with cries for justice, far also from the corridors of power where ministries recently squabbled over the right age for consensual sex, lie 197 districts - yes 197, read the figure again - where children are regularly abused. In these districts -- all ridden by conflict -- words like illegal detention, arbitrary arrests, sexual violence, torture...