-The Hindu     In Uttarakhand, women take the lead role in reviving and maintaining civil forests under Van Panchayats even in the face of several obstacles Munni Adhikari, a resident of Dhaura Gram Sabha in Lamgara block of Uttarakhand's Almora district, lives in an idyllic setting: green slopes covered with tall pine and oak trees, wild flowers in full bloom, neat little terrace farms... While this natural splendour can instantly captivate any...

-The Hindu Bangalore: The government has identified 15 basic amenities to enhance quality of life in villages. It has asked gram panchayats (GPs) to make all these facilities available to the people. These include drinking water, playgrounds and open-air theatres. The move is aimed at arresting the migration of rural people towards urban areas. In a circular issued last week, the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) Department said of the 6.11...

-Press Information Bureau The India Rural Development Report 2012/13 was released here by Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Rural Development, Government of India. The Report was prepared by IDFC Foundation in collaboration with network partners, the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), the Institute for Rural Management Anand (IRMA), and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), with contributions from several other researchers, experts and civil society organisations. On...

-The Telegraph New Delhi/Patna: Chief minister Nitish Kumar today landed in the national capital with a demand of a relief package of Rs 12,000 crore from the Centre. A day after declaring 33 of Bihar's 38 districts as drought-hit, Nitish, who met finance minister P. Chidambaram and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, said the state's agrarian economy was totally paralysed because of the acute rainfall deficiency during the kharif season. Nitish requested Chidambaram to...

-Kafila.org This fact-finding exercise was coordinated by the CENTRE FOR POLICY ANALYSIS. Team members were the human rights activist and former civil servant Harsh Mander; former Director-General of the Border Security Force, E N Rammohan; Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University; National Integration Council member John Dayal; senior journalist Sukumar Muralidharan and CPA Director and senior editor Seema Mustafa. Introduction and Overview The first impression of the Muzaffarnagar countryside, now green...