The National Advisory Council headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi is unhappy with the poor implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, which was once billed as a landmark initiative of the UPA I for economic empowerment of the tribal people. The NAC now wants the government to change the law to make it more effective and has recommended several amendments, including one to...

As many as 9.063 lakh Manav Divas under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) have been created for the job card holders, since April in Dehradun district, said a department officers while talking to The Pioneer on Tuesday. He said that the department has spent `15.11 crore for providing employment to the job card holders under the MNREGA since April in the district. While talking to The Pioneer Doiwala Block...

Union rural development and panchayati raj minister C P Joshi on Wednesday suggested that the re c o rd s maintained under the M a h at m a Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme could be used to identify the poor to prepare the BPL census 2011. Emphasising the need for a one-dimensional reference for surveying the BPL families, Joshi said that identifying the ‘real’ poor was getting tougher in...

When we hear the word innovation, we often think of new technologies or silver bullet solutions — like hydrogen fuel cells or a cure for cancer. To be sure, breakthroughs are vital: antibiotics and vaccines, for example, transformed global health. But as we’ve argued in Fixes, some of the greatest advances come from taking old ideas or technologies and making them accessible to millions of people who are underserved. One area...

At the Cancun climate change conference in December 2010, Jairam Ramesh, Union minister for environment and forests, raised the white flag of surrender when, departing from the prepared text, he declared, “all countries, we believe, must take on binding commitments under appropriate legal forms”. The minister thus signalled that India will give in to pressures from developed countries to convert its voluntary, nationally-determined mitigation actions into internationally-binding commitments in an...