-The Hindu Business Line   A device that literally makes light of the rice parboiling process Bhuvani Devi, a frail-looking woman in her early thirties, has taken up a new challenge - to produce a tonne of parboiled rice in Baarwan village in Jharkhand's Deoghar district. Unlike what the region's paddy farmers did until now, she wants to process and sell parboiled rice rather than paddy itself. "We used to sell paddy at...

-The Indian Express As the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) enters its 10th year on Monday, data shows households have been provided employment for just a little over one third of the mandated 100 days so far this financial year on an average. By March end, this could improve a bit, but still end up among the lowest averages since the inception of the Act. According to data available...

-PTI Cooperative society employing French technology to cater 2,000 litres of Sulabh Jal to over 300 families a day Gaighata (West Bengal): Once forced to drink arsenic-contaminated ground water, residents of a remote hamlet in West Bengal near the India-Bangladesh border are now purifying water from ponds and selling packaged safe drinking water to neighbouring villages. Using a new innovative technology from France, village co-operative society Madhusudankati Samabay Krishi Unnayan Samity has constructed...

-Outlook New Delhi: There is no central programme as popular as MNREGA; this was some state governments' message to the Centre as they conveyed their displeasure over the fund crunch for the scheme. On the occasion of 10th MNREGA Divas celebrations today, these states narrated how the rural job scheme did "exceptionally well" in the insurgency-hit areas of the country particularly in the northeast and Naxal-affected districts. The northeastern states conveyed their difficulties...

-Press Release of People's Action for Employment Guarantee New Delhi: Monday marks the 9th anniversary of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The Act is unique to India and is known across the world as not only one of the most innovative social security measures but also an entitlement guaranteed by law passed unanimously by both houses of parliament. Since its inception, 1 in 3 households in Rural India have worked...