-The Times of India   In a brutal attack on Right to Information Act (RTI) activists, village elders of Gollalamamida in Pedapudi mandal in East Godavari district have imposed a 'social boycott' on three students, one of them visually challenged, for complaining against the local officers on their irregularities. The students ran away from the village and met police commissioner of Vijayawada N Madhusudan Reddy here on Wednesday seeking protection. He assured...

Poor, pregnant with third child? Even the state’s giving up on you. Why Less For More     * The ministry of health and family welfare wants to target poor, pregnant women with more than two children, take away entitlements and benefits     * Critics say the two-child norm will severely restrict the number of beneficiaries of the Janani Suraksha Yojana scheme. The scheme, launched in 2005, has been a great success.     *...

-The Times of India   The Union Cabinet on Thursday cleared setting up a national level social security fund for unorganized workers. The proposed National Social Security Fund will have an initial corpus of Rs 1,000 crore and will benefit 43.3 crore workers in the unorganized sector. Unorganized workers form the most significant part of total workers in the country and suffer from cycles of employment and absence of social security...

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) — at the initiative of which the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was rolled out in UPA-I — is taking a fresh look at how to strengthen it. The NAC wants the scheme to move from its “relief work mode” to one that would blend “natural resources and labour to build productive assets.” When the NAC meets here on Thursday, the Deep...

-The Times of India   With the National Food Security bill out of the way, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) will now take up issues like urban poverty, especially the vulnerable groups, and reforms in the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Area) Act on a priority basis. Sources said the NAC had already begun consultation on reforms in the PESA. The Act, which has been lying largely in a limbo,...