The social audit of development works under MGNREGA in Todgarh panchayat, Ajmer district asserted and endorsed the Rs 56 lakh embezzlement found by the district administration in a recent enquiry, whose findings were read out at the social audit gram sabha yesterday. It may be recalled that only recently, panchayat resident Bikam Chand Jain who was seeking information  on MGNREGA and other panchayat works in Todgarh had his legs cut...

Microcredit is losing its halo in many developing countries. Microcredit was once extolled by world leaders like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair as a powerful tool that could help eliminate poverty, through loans as small as $50 to cowherds, basket weavers and other poor people for starting or expanding businesses. But now microloans have prompted political hostility in Bangladesh, India, Nicaragua and other developing countries. In December, the prime minister of...

In post-globalisation India, middle-class heroes are usually entrepreneurs who make a fast buck, stars that glitter brightly and talk glibly, cricketers who hit the ball hard. In an aspirational world of consumer goods, fine dining and malls, values such as service, integrity, simplicity are becoming rare. Perhaps that is why the story of Binayak Sen, the skilled doctor who turned his back on material success to work among the poor...

The rapid growth of global markets has not seen the parallel development of social and economic institutions to ensure balanced, inclusive and sustainable growth. Although we may not have yet reached “the end of history,” globalisation has brought us closer to “the end of geography” as we have known it. The compression of time and space triggered by the Third Industrial Revolution —roughly, since 1980 — has changed our interactions with...

The social audit of development work under the MGNREGA in Todgarh panchayat, Ajmer, has confirmed the Rs 56-lakh embezzlement found by the district administration in a recent enquiry. The findings were read out at the social audit gram sabha on Thursday. The Todgarh panchayat is close to Malaton Ki Weir, also in Ajmer, where anomalies amounting to Rs 1.41 crore was uncovered during a special audit last year. "The scale...