After taking on Suresh Kalmadi and Co on the Commonwealth Games, Rajya Sabha MP and former panchayati raj minister Mani Shankar Aiyar has now trained his guns on the UPA government and the Planning Commission for bureaucratising all flagship programmes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the National Rural Health Mission. In a free-wheeling interview with ET, Mr Aiyar said instead of relying on panchayati raj institutions for better...

Five years after the enactment of the Right to Information Act, awareness of the law, its provisions and potential appears to be very low. Marking the completion of five years, in September 2010, of the enactment of the Right to Information Act, the Central Information Commission (CIC) held the fifth annual convention on “RTI: Challenges and Opportunities,” in New Delhi on September 13 and 14. It was largely a gathering of...

Considerable sections of the urban population may face serious food insecurity even while the urban economy grows. There is a need for urgent action on this front. Over the two decades of rapid growth of the Indian economy, the urban economy is generally perceived as having done very well. However, high urban economic growth need not by itself imply improved living standards for all urban residents. In particular, the recent and...

VISHAL, the son of a farm labourer in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, is almost four. He should weigh around 16kg (35lb). But scooping him up from the floor costs his nursery teacher, a frail woman in a faded sari, little effort. She slips Vishal’s scrawny legs through two holes cut in the corners of a cloth sack, which she hooks to a weighing scale. The needle stops at...

Gangadhar Gaikwad writes to Governor after work on his house was stalled Gangadhar Gaikwad's neighbourhood hates him. His Scheduled Caste background is a constant source of irritation. And a house that the government decided to build him is a thorn in the flesh. One fine day, construction of the house stopped. “These Mangs [an SC community in Maharashtra] have come and now they want to build a house in front of ours....