For me, stepping into the simple precincts of Bapu Kutir in Sevagram and seeing Gandhiji’s personal belongings was indeed a lesson in humility.  The charkha holds pride of place in the small mud dwelling even as Gandhians take turns to spin the wheel. One gentleman told us that a national shift to khadi would provide employment to thousands of people. The greatest thing about visiting Sevagram is to find that the...

The state government has decided to create special TRAIning centres for out-of-school children as part of implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act. The Department of Basic Education has already created the detailed proposal for these centres, which has been duly approved by the Centre. These centres will be providing special TRAIning to about 95,000 children, aged between 6 to 14 years, who are not enrolled in schools. Retired teachers...

The Centre was not releasing Rs 1,700 crore in NREGA funds to West Bengal, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee claimed today. "Despite placing full account for expenditure under the NREGA scheme in the state, the central government is yet to give Rs 1,700 crore," Bhattacharjee told a panchayat workers' rally here. "They are giving Rs 100 crore or Rs 150 crore in phases, but have withheld the main amount," he said. Ministers of state...

Latin America, the poster child of bad economic policy in the 1980s and early 1990s, is leading the way in one rapidly evolving area of social development: conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes. These schemes provide cash payments to poor households that meet certain behavioural requirements, generally related to children’s healthcare and education. The idea here is to support minimal levels of consumption through income transfers, while encouraging long-term human development. The...

The initiatives under the programme include gearing up to meet new challenges in climate change, Public-Private partnership projects and programmes to make more people take to agriculture as a livelihood Looking to boost farm sector growth by more than 4%, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research has chalked out a Rs2300-crore programme with focus on research and making farming a popular livelihood option. “Now every state is coming up well in the...