Those responsible for the framing and implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) have once again protested the linking of Aadhaar number (Unique Identification UID) with the job guarantee scheme for the rural masses. In a letter sent to the Union rural development secretary, B K Sinha, they have expressed dissatisfaction over the decision to make UID compulsory for extending NREGA benefits in Mysore saying that the...

Unpaid bills of Rs 17,000 crore — and growing — have revealed hidden food subsidies and acute financial mismanagement as the government prepares to adopt the costliest, most ambitious legislation of its tenure. Documents accessed by Hindustan Times reveal this is the money the government now owes the state-run Food Corporation of India (FCI), hampering its mammoth operation of buying grain from the farmer, storing it and selling it cheaply...

In Greater Noida, farmers resist fiercely attempts to take over their land for the Yamuna expressway and a hi-tech city. IT is a tale of two worlds, one in the present and the other in the future; one living and breathing and toiling away in parts of the National Capital Region and the other beautifully blueprinted and waiting to be willed into reality by the government and its elites in...

The curiosum of a ‘red regime’ with a knack to get re-elected term after term for over more than three decades within the ambit of a full-fledged multi-party democracy has finally disappeared. The Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has not merely lost the poll in West Bengal, it has been made mincemeat of. Its vote share has come down from close to 50 per cent...

The story of Khairlanji as a story of the plight of the Scheduled Castes in scores of villages has joined the pantheon of protest literature of the Dalit movement with the staging of Marathi play Tanta Mukta Gaon (Dispute-Free Village). The Maharashtra government in 2010 declared the village of Khairlanji, infamous for the brutal killings of four members of the Bhotmange family, a “Tanta Mukta Gaon” under a government programme which...