This wedding season, anxious grooms from Parsa and Ghatburra, two villages in Chhattisgarh's Surguja district, were offered financial assistance from an unlikely source. Adani Mining Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Ltd, was handing out loans to all those who could prove that the money would be spent on marriage arrangements. “A company official took us to the bank, opened accounts in our names, and gave us cheques for Rs....
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Will Jairam Ramesh's new plan fix NREGA? by Sreelatha Menon
The new rural development minister wants to use technology to force states to make payments. Critics suggest that he should fix existing problems first. Jairam Ramesh is not afraid of stirring things up. Sixty days into his stint as the new Rural Development Minister, Ramesh, he has unveiled what he calls NREGA 2.0, a reform package that he feels would make the Rs 40,000 crore programme actually work. Ramesh has put together...
More »Jolt to Posco in Odisha as High Court stays the acquisition of land by Nageshwar Patnaik
-The Economic Times The Orissa High Court on Friday stayed the acquisition of land for building the much-delayed 12-million tonne Posco project, dealing a further setback to the India plans of the South Korean steel major which has not been able to progress much for the past five years. In a ruling on Friday, the high court ordered status quo on the private land being acquired by the state government that...
More »Ministers, babus face power brake by Dhananjay Mahapatra
The discretionary powers of ministers and bureaucrats will either be shelved or severely curtailed. Tasked to draft a national policy on government procurements, a group of ministers (GoM) headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee feels that abuse of discretionary powers plays a major role in fostering corruption, be it procurement of rice or purchase of aircraft. With the total government procurement - from the Centre to panchayat level - worth a huge...
More »Land Bill will hit dryland farmers, says VJAS by Ramu Bhagwat
Vidarbha Civil Society Collective and Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) have raised strong objections to provisions in the National Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill 2011 tabled in Parliament on Wednesday. They demanded that the Bill be redrafted to safeguard interests of the dryland farmers and other landowners. "The Bill has ignored all suggestions made by the civil society and farmer advocacy groups. A month ago the rural development minister Jairam...
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