NEARLY 80 km from Pune is Ralegan Siddhi village with about 3,000 people. It would have been one among the hundreds of nondescript villages in Parner taluk of Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra, had it not been for Kisan Baburao Hazare, 71, better known as Anna, or older brother, a title that was appended to his name after he made the village more than just a dot on the map. Until he was...
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Media overkill by TK Rakalakshmi
They played to the gallery, grabbing every opportunity to put Hazare's agitation centre stage. THE movement against corruption led by Anna Hazare had the media completely on its side. The agitation, which began with Hazare announcing that he would begin an indefinite hunger strike on April 5 demanding the passage of a people-inspired Lokpal Bill, ended on April 9. The five days of the agitation saw the mass media, especially...
More »GoM to check NREGS implementation
The state government on Wednesday constituted a group of ministers to examine the current system for implementation of MGNREGS in the state and suggest suitable modifications to protect the interests of rural poor labourers, apart from considering other demands of the field functionaries. Ministers who are part of the GoM include D Manikya Varaprasada Rao (rural development), V Sunitha Laxma Reddy (pensions & women development), Vatti Vasant Kumar (tourism), B Satyanarayana...
More »Law ministry proposes 20-yr term for babus as part of governance reforms
The law ministry has prepared a 10-point governance reforms agenda which envisages capping a bureaucrat's term to 20 years and seeks reforms in allocation of mining and land rights. The presentation made to key UPA functionaries, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi , says all new recruitments to central government jobs should be for 20 years and any extension beyond that would depend on the outcome of...
More »Planning Commission may lower poverty estimates by Sangeeta Singh & Nikhil Kanekal
India’s apex planning body may cap national poverty at 32% for the purpose of calculating welfare benefits in the 12th Five-year Plan that starts on 1 April 2012, it said a day before a meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The development comes on a day the Supreme Court asked Montek Singh Ahluwalia to respond why it should not strike down an earlier cap of 36% poverty after the government sought...
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