The Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council has listed dos and don’ts for Montek Singh Ahluwalia on the special component plan that forms a part of the five-year plan devised by the Planning Commission. The council has focused on the Dalits in the special plan that has two sub-plans: one for Dalits and the other for tribals. The council’s working group on Dalit issues — Harsh Mander and Farah Naqvi are in the...

As the Right to Information Act (RTI) celebrated the sixth year of its coming, there has been much heated discussion, often emotional, of the benefits that it has brought and also the challenges with which it has confronted government. This debate came to a head with the prime minister’s inaugural address to the Annual Convention of the Central Information Commission on October 14. It is accepted in all circles that the...

-EPW   The media noise shed little light on the important issues involved in deciding the coverage of welfare programmes. The context for the Planning Commission’s (PC) affidavit on the official poverty line was the deliberation in the Supreme Court on how many people could be covered by the public distribution system (PDS). But while the sound and fury over the poverty line – Rs 32 per capita per day in the urban...

While a CAG audit is welcome, it alone won’t improve the effectiveness of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh’s recent decision to ask the CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General of India) to audit MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) funds has created a buzz among social sector observers. They’ve been demanding reforms in MGNREGA’s implementation to arrest the slide in its effectiveness. The...

-The Hindu   Apart from ensuring the immediate appointment of 18,000 panchayat development officers and as many junior engineers, the Centre has drawn up a blueprint to provide jobs to three-lakh youth in the 60 left wing extremist affected districts in the country. Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh, in his consolidated note for the approval of the Empowered Group of Secretaries for the Integrated Action Plan (IAP) under Planning Commission member...