The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has cornered the state government, which had recently demanded a special package of Rs 2,500 crore for frost-hit farmers, in its report tabled in state Assembly today. The CAG has found gross irregularities, non-implementation of schemes, weak budgetary and expenditure controls in both original and supplementary budgets, rush of expenditure at the close of the financial year and underutilisation of central assistance. “The targets...
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Towards a TB-free India by Ramya Kannan
Tuberculosis continues to be a major health problem in India. But the unveiling of a new test to diagnose TB and drug resistance on World Tuberculosis Day (March 24) brings some hope into a bleak scenario. Last Thursday, on World Tuberculosis Day, for the first time since the 1880s there was probably some justifiable cause for jubilation. After centuries of grappling with sputum smear microscopy, developed way back in the 1880s,...
More »Asylum-seeker numbers fall to almost half levels of a decade earlier, UN reports
The number of asylum-seekers seeking to live in the industrialized world continues to fall and is now almost half the level it was a decade ago, the United Nations refugee agency reported today as it released its annual snapshot of asylum trends. The report from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) finds that 358,800 applications for asylum were lodged last year in 44 developed countries – a drop of 5...
More »Madhya Pradesh government has no information about flight that took Anderson out of Bhopal
Details of use of state government plane to ferry Union Carbide Chairman Warren Anderson out of Bhopal in 1984 are not available with the Madhya Pradesh government, state's aviation directorate has said. Responding to an RTI application seeking to know who had sanctioned the flight which took Anderson to Delhi soon after the Bhopal gas tragedy in December 1984, the aviation directorate, after nine months of the application having been filed,...
More »Is Rajasthan Government Selling Farmers’ Interests? by Bharat Dogra
DEALS WITH MULTINATIONALS AND OTHER BIG AGRIBUSINESS COMPANIES A wide range of farmers’ organisations, Gandhian organisations, people’s movements and NGOs have united to oppose a series of disturbing agreements which the Rajasthan Government reached with various multinational and other agribusiness companies including Monsanto. These agreements, which greatly increase the control and influence of these companies over the agriculture sector in India’s biggest State (in terms of area), have proved so controversial...
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