Monija Khatun has not got her salary as ad-hoc teacher for 17 months, youth in Soliya village in Jharkhand have got no work under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) for the last five months and half of the newly constructed wells have collapsed in another village. These are just a few stories from a Naxal affected district of Jharkhand, where people feel alienated from the development process, even...

-The Times of India   In a brutal attack on Right to Information Act (RTI) activists, village elders of Gollalamamida in Pedapudi mandal in East Godavari district have imposed a 'social boycott' on three students, one of them visually challenged, for complaining against the local officers on their irregularities. The students ran away from the village and met police commissioner of Vijayawada N Madhusudan Reddy here on Wednesday seeking protection. He assured...

The UPA government has decided to consult all the Chief Ministers, political parties and other stakeholders after posting on the web the draft land acquisition and rehabilitation and resettlement Bill by Saturday. Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh told journalists he would be sending a copy of the draft legislation to all the Chief Ministers and seek their comments. He will also be conferring with some of them personally. Mr. Ramesh...

Ruth Manorama started her work with the urban poor in her youth; there has been no turning back ever since. She is the powerful voice of Dalit women today. Is it easy being a Dalit in India? And a woman at that? Have things changed for the better for the Dalits who constitute roughly 16.23 per cent of our population, since the Constitution of India “cast a special responsibility on the...

The return of Drinking Water and Sanitation portfolio under Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh’s wing meant that he is now in charge of three departments which he could have distributed among the three Ministers of State under him. Instead of assigning departments to each one of them, Ramesh, on the other hand, tried to keep all his three MoSs — Sisir Adhikari, Pradeep Jain and Agatha Sangma — happy by...