-The Business Standard   Vimla Devi is a committed anganwadi worker (AWW) in a remote village in Uttar Pradesh, the most populated state of India. Anganwadi is a village level institution under Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), one of the most talked about flagship programmes of the Indian Government. She is also the weakest link in a critical programme, which is underfunded, says Shantanu Gupta in the first of field-data reports, the...

In a move most ministries would shy away from, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has written to the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, requesting him for a performance and financial audit of the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme (NREGA), the most heavily funded flagship scheme of the UPA government. The minister has written to CAG Vinod Rai, who was recently criticised by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for calling frequent...

-The Hindu   The Rajasthan Cabinet on Monday put its seal of approval on a controversial decision to give khatedari rights to over 30,000 farmers occupying the custodian land in Alwar, Bharatpur, Hanumangarh and Sriganganagar districts, vacated mostly be those driven out of the State during the Partition, by paying a nominal regularisation fee. The farmers, whose ancestors were allotted the custodian land, were earlier required to pay 25 per cent of the...

-The Hindu   Every award of a lok adalat, including an order recording a settlement between the parties in a ‘cheque bouncing case' under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, is deemed a civil court decree, and as such it is executable by a civil court, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday. A Bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and J. Chelameswar said: “Section 21 of the Legal Services Authorities Act does not...

-The Economic and Political Weekly   Media freedom is not restricted by one law but by collusion between economic and political power and big media. The defamation case filed in a Pune court by former Press Council chairman justice P B Sawant has drawn attention to the criminal law of defamation and whether it restricts the freedom of the press. Justice Sawant was awarded Rs 100 crore in exemplary damages in the case...