-The United Nations   Top United Nations officials today stressed the need to realize the human right to water and sanitation, stating that it is critical not only to a life of dignity but also to achieving progress in the areas such as poverty reduction, boosting child health and combating diseases. In July 2010, the General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring that safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is a human...

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...

Pontius Pilate asked Christ, "What is truth?" and did not wait for an answer. In contrast 'what is civil society?' has provoked innumerable answers, descriptions and definitions. It is suffice to say that the term includes a large chunk of social groups outside the State and the group is much bigger than the small spectrum the media is focusing on. Much of India's law-making process has been outside the scrutiny of...

Terming the Right to Education Act as an "attack" on the sovereignty of madarsas and other minority institutions, Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband today said it will oppose it. "The seminary will strongly protest the move to snatch Rights of madarsas through RTE and it is with the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which is already opposing it," newly-appointed vice-chancellor Maulana Abul Qasim Nomani told PTI. He said the Act poses...

New-look programme to be rolled out in 2,000 most backward blocks within a year As part of a coordinated and aligned initiative, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council, a re-energised Union Rural Development Ministry and the Planning Commission are working in tandem to make up for the time and money lost due to the underperformance in UPA-II on the government's flagship programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Even as...