The sea change that India’s national scheme for rural employment guarantee has accomplished is hard to fathom, its vastness touching the lives or more than 100 million people. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (NREGA, subsequently renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, or MGNREGA) was a landmark in Indian legislation. Under the act, as of April 2008, for the first time in India’s history, all rural citizens have a legal right...
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The backlash begins against the world landgrab by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The neo-colonial rush for global farmland has gone exponential since the food scare of 2007-2008. Last week's long-delayed report by the World Bank suggests that purchases in developing countries rose to 45m hectares in 2009, a ten-fold jump from levels of the last decade. Two thirds have been in Africa, where institutions offer weak defence. As is by now well-known, sovereign wealth funds from the Mid-East, as well as state-entities from China,...
More »Crucial process by V Venkatesan
The method of selection of Information Commissioners cries out for reform. FOR the Right to Information (RTI) Act to be successful, it is not enough if it has provisions that encourage information-sharing and punish those Information Officers who deny requests for information on specious grounds. Activists have found that while deciding appeal cases the degree of commitment of Information Commissioners to the Act's objectives matters more than the supportive provisions of...
More »Schools not keen on mandatory panel by Nalini Ravichandran
The Right to Education Act (RTE) Mandates the setting up of School Management Committees (SMC) by all private unaided schools for managing school affairs, including fixing fees, in six months’ time but so far no school has done anything about it. RTE implementation would complete the stipulated six-month period on September 1 but many schools are not even aware of the concept under which 75 per cent of the members of...
More »CIC awards Rs. 50,000 compensation to poor patient by Vidya Subrahmaniam
Private hospitals that get concessional land allotments must keep 10% of their beds for poor “Most persons for whom such scheme is intended do not enjoy its benefits” In a landmark decision, the Central Information Commission, on August 20, directed the Directorate of Health Services, Delhi, to pay a compensation of Rs. 50,000 to a poor patient who could not get a bed under the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category. All private...
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