-The Hindu Confining it to just the Ministry of Rural Development would be the most retrograde step in democratic decentralisation in over a quarter century. If, as The Hindu’s exclusive on Wednesday indicates, Prime Minister Narendra Modi were to close down the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, it would confirm one’s worst fears about his government’s hypocritical approach to grass-roots democracy for grass-roots development. This was a lacuna that was evident in the ‘Gujarat...
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Additional days of work available under MGNREGS not taken up in drought hit states
Two back-to-back reports that shed light on the status of MGNREGA implementation in the country, have been released recently from the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD). A review of MGNREGA implementation in 8 different states of India by a team of experts during the month of May this year reveals that in many of the drought affected districts, the Gram Panchayats have no work to offer under the programme. (Please click...
More »The drought you didn't hear about: Villagers in Gujarat know a good monsoon won’t bail them out -Aarefa Johari
-Scroll.in The government is calling it 'semi-scarcity'. In barren Saurashtra, farmers say that water promised to them from the Narmada project has not been reliable. For almost three years, bathing has been a luxury for Manjuben Jhala. The 50-year-old dairy farmer from Sowarada village has spent all her summer days herding cattle across the barren landscape of Gujarat’s Jamnagar district, in search of fodder and a few scoops of water for her frail...
More »Letting them off easy -Manju Menon & Kanchi Kohli
-The Hindu In the newly proposed draft notification seeking to amend the Environment Impact Assessment, the Central government offers a way out to those who have violated environmental norms The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF) has issued a draft notification seeking to amend the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) of 2006, allowing those who violate this law to continue work with an Environment Supplement Plan (ESP). This is the first...
More »Centre Stonewalls NDTV's RTI Queries On Drought Measures -Sreenivasan Jain and Aishwarya Iyer
-NDTV New Delhi: The severe drought that has gripped the countryside was no flash in the pan; when the monsoon of 2015 recorded poor rainfall, it should have set the alarm bells ringing for policymakers at least a year ago. So what exactly did the Centre do to tackle the crisis? To seek answers, NDTV filed a series of Right To Information or RTI applications in key Central ministries meant to tackle drought,...
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