The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (nac) — at the initiative of which the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was rolled out in UPA-I — is taking a fresh look at how to strengthen it. The nac wants the scheme to move from its “relief work mode” to one that would blend “natural resources and labour to build productive assets.” When the nac meets here on Thursday, the Deep...

While Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi is on Bharat Bhraman assuring Dalits, tribals and other unprivileged their share in growth, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has tasked himself with ensuring party scion’s mark in the government policy. Livelihood compensation for displaced landless on a par with landowners, share in the price appreciation of land with the project, acquisition in strict accordance with the tribal and forest dwellers acts are the...

Days before the draft Lokpal bill is expected to be put before the Union Cabinet for its consideration, the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) headed by Aruna Roy has begun lobbying for its version of the anti-corruption legislation. Roy and her colleagues met with law minister and government representative on the joint drafting panel Salman Khursheed on Tuesday and are likely to meet HRD minister Kapil Sibal...

The Food Security Bill, approved by a group of ministers this month, has ignored malnutrition as a subject, surprising many observers in UN bodies. The reason given is a turf war among different central ministries. According to N C Saxena, a member of the National Advisory Council that has opposed the government’s draft of the Bill, the women and child development ministry was against including the subject in the Bill as...

-The Times of India   With the National Food Security bill out of the way, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (nac) will now take up issues like urban poverty, especially the vulnerable groups, and reforms in the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Area) Act on a priority basis. Sources said the nac had already begun consultation on reforms in the PESA. The Act, which has been lying largely in a limbo,...