The Guwahati high court, Imphal bench has issued a notice of motion returnable within four weeks in response to the writ petition filed by 14 Job card holders of Naoriya Pakhanglakpa Gram Panchayat for non payment of unemployment allowance despite the fact that the Ombudsman, MGNREGS, Imphal West district had issued an award in this regard. A statement issued by the Human Right Law Network (HRLN) in this connection said that...

About four years after its first survey on the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Orissa's hinterlands that showed large-scale defalcation of money, the Delhi-based NGO Centre for Environment and Food Security today in its second performance audit revealed that 67 per cent of very poor Dalit and tribal households in Orissa and UP did not get even a single day of the NREGS employment during previous...

Taking note of the depleting water table across the district, Gurgaon MP Rao Inderjeet Singh has asked local officers to identify water bodies in the district which can be revived to recharge ground water. The MP said: Under the Integrated Water Management programme, the water bodies can be saved from vanishing. Singh, also the chairman of Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT, reviewed the progress of work under central and state government sponsored...

Amid technical and infrastructural constraints, Maharashtra has rolled out 1.2 million Aadhaars, but the beneficiaries have been able to make little use of these numbers Ashok Bhil, a 25-year-old graduate from Navalpur, 7 Km from Tembhli, is disappointed with the way the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is rolling out Aadhaar in Maharashtra. Last September, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government chose Tembhli, a small village in the predominantly tribal Nandurbar...

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...