* Documentary evidence gathered by the Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC) from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Rajasthan points to large-scale embezzlement in nrega projects * Panchayats often furnish fake bills and fictitious companies have been floated to divert funds * Hundreds of crores are lost to this sort of leakage * The CAG, too, has pointed out  large-scale irregularities and corruption in the implementation of NREGA projects...

The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme has been conceived as a major intervention by the Central government to deal with the high rates of infant mortality, low birth weight, and malnutrition among women and children. The scheme essentially targets children in the age group of zero to six years and women in the reproductive age group. The problem is that the ICDS is seen as the success story behind...

Today, we have reached a historic milestone in our country's struggle for children's right to education. The Constitution (86th Amendment) Act, 2002, making elementary education a Fundamental Right, and its consequential legislation, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, comes into force today. The enforcement of this right represents a momentous step forward in our 100-year struggle for universalising elementary education. Over the years, the demand...

Increased representation for women can unleash a broader process that can be set in motion by the strength of sheer numbers. One measure of whether it is important to have women in important policy formulation roles is to examine how a largely male-dominated system of government has served women. It turns out that India performs very poorly in this regard. Despite a few heartening examples to the contrary, in general Indian...

Dubbing the Centre's talk of ceasefire and talks with naxals “non-serious,” members of democratic and civil rights organisations on Friday demanded that the state stop the military offensive, Operation Greenhunt, “against its own people” and initiate back-channel talks with the CPI (Maoist). Addressing a press conference here, writer and human rights activist Arundhati Roy said: “The government's use of the military to solve political problems is not new. The government has...