-The Economic Times A Parliamentary Standing Committee has taken a grim view of constant pruning of budget of agriculture ministry. It has asked the Centre to adopt a fresh outlook towards allocation of finances to the sector as it sustains economically weak farming community.  The parliamentary panel examining the demands for grants of agriculture ministry found that in the Eleventh Plan there was a wide difference between proposed budget estimate (BE) of...

-The Business Standard The Ministry of Rural Development has rejected the demand of a Parliamentary Standing Committee to include the works of artisans, weavers and leather workers in the list of permissible works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The Central Employment Guarantee Council, constituted under the legislation establishing the rural jobs scheme to oversee it, had earlier turned down this recommendation of the standing committee on urban and...

-Express News Service Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal on Tuesday said that a national-level task force would be set up to frame guidelines to protect the interest of severely disabled children. Disability activists had last week raised objections to a clause in the Right to Education Act that gives the option of home-based schooling for children with severe disabilities. In a meeting with activists on Tuesday, Sibal assured that all...

When India embarked on its “unique ID” project in the fall of 2010, pledging to distribute unique 12-digit numbers to 1.2 billion people, the hope was that hundreds of millions of Indians who don’t have a passport, driver’s license or other credible identity document would get one – and with it, a ticket to essential government and private sector services. A new survey led by Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New...

If the Bill seeking to protect children from sexual offences is passed by Parliament in the form in which it was cleared last week by the Cabinet, then there will be a direct but unstated conflict between the general and special laws on rape. Under the special law proposed in the freshly revised "Protection of Children From Sexual Offences Bill" , no person below 18 years will have the legal capability...