In the long speeches made at the opening ceremony of the CW games, every important individual, department or institution that made a contribution, was acknowledged. Did anyone hear a word about the workers who made these world-class games possible? Maybe it was just a slip or maybe it was not considered necessary. Anyway, the workers were not there for the speeches, having been driven out of the capital just a...
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ECI gets tough on electoral abuses by P Sainath
District-level committees also to scrutinise any instances of ‘paid news' The constitution of an Expenditure Monitoring Division in the Election Commission of India indicates that the ECI is stepping up its efforts to tackle ‘paid news' and other abuses of money power during elections. The 2009 elections, to the Lok Sabha and to some State legislatures, saw a spate of complaints as millions of rupees were spent by powerful political parties...
More »In Sanskritis, 25% seats for poor by Akshaya Mukul
According to the HRD ministry, the new set of Sanskriti schools across the country being planned by the department of personnel & training (DoPT) will have to give 25% reservation to children of economically weaker sections as per the Right to Education Act. Earlier, DoPT had sought the opinion of the HRD ministry on the proposed Sanskriti schools. The ministry has urged DoPT to spell out if Sanskriti schools are specified...
More »Spiralling food prices burning holes in pockets by Aditya Raj Das
As the common man continues to reel under the spiraling rise in prices of essential commodities especially key food items and vegetables the forever-rising food inflation is posing a serious challenge to policy makers. Though top government officials, including the Finance Minister and the Chairman of the Planning Commission have repeatedly assured that the food prices will soon stop rising, in reality it has gone the other way. The rising spree...
More »The mass job guarantee by Aruna Roy & Nachiket Udupa
The sea change that India’s national scheme for rural employment guarantee has accomplished is hard to fathom, its vastness touching the lives or more than 100 million people. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (NREGA, subsequently renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, or MGNREGA) was a landmark in Indian legislation. Under the act, as of April 2008, for the first time in India’s history, all rural citizens have a legal right...
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