The government today ordered an inquiry into the alleged irregularities in wage payments under NREGA in Kotda village in Gujarat's Kotiyana district. Rural Development Minister C P Joshi asked the National Level Monitor (NLM) to examine the alleged misappropriation of funds related to NREGA wage payments in Kotda village and submit a report by November 30. The direction came following media reports about an e-literate panwala in the village stumbling upon a...

Being obsessed with google, a betel shop owner has exposed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) scam in Porbandar where most of the laborers mentioned in the list of beneficiaries were affluent NRIs, doctors in real life, who had never been a part of any job scheme. They have been shown as unemployed village labourers holding NREGA job cards, reports Hiral Dave of the Financial Express. The...

Even as the Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment — dubbed “the Indian Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)” — released its first report on the impact of climate change in four regions of the country, it admitted that significant research gaps and lack of extensive databases were hampering Indian climate science. Long-term localised data was not available on vegetation and forest cover, socio-economic trends, farm inputs, pests and crop diseases,...

If the direr predictions are to be believed, it may soon be a case of “Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink,” as the effects of global warming and water use patterns combine to make access to good drinking water an issue, especially in developing countries. As another of the many measures initiated to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of ensuring environmental sustainability through access to drinking water and...

Using the mobile platform to expand audiences and connecting with readers using social media such as Twitter, Facebook and even custom-built tools are important methods for newspapers to grow, speakers at the annual Digital Media Round Table of WAN-IFRA, the global organisation of newspapers and news publishers, said here on Monday. Data from developed markets showed that the compounded annual growth rate for advertising on mobile phones was projected to be...