It was the end of a long, tiring and humid day. Sitting near the bamboo gate of his 'precious' betel vineyard, 70-year-old Narayan Mandal said despondently, "I don't want to migrate, once again." Mandal, a resident of Gobindpur village in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district, is one of the many opposing the state government's ambitious $12 billion Posco steel project. For the last six years, three gram panchayats - Dhinkia, Nuagaon and Gada...

In an effort to counterLeft wing extremism, the Central government is looking at ways to rework its development programmes and its delivery mechanism in the affected districts. The decision to go back to the drawing board on the delivery of keyrural development programmes -- like the rural employment guarantee scheme and roads programme etc --- comes after Rural Development MinisterJairam Ramesh traveled to five Left-wing extremism (LWE) affected districts -...

Affluent farmers are exploiting MGNREGS, the central govt’s flagship programme, sending their workers to draw wages whenever they are not required on their farms THE GOVERNMENT seems to be in a fix with its flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) being widely misused even as the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) decides to conduct its own independent audit of the scheme along with National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)...

-The Hindu   ‘Will work on full-time basis to evolve more objective standards of scrutiny' Amid criticism that industrialisation and economic growth were getting blocked due to delay in granting “environmental clearances” to industries, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday announced the government's plans to set up an independent regulator for giving environmental clearances. “We also hope to establish an independent regulator — the National Environment Appraisal and Monitoring Authority — soon. This...

This essay describes and compares Parliament and the Supreme Court and examines the relationship between them. Parliament may still be a great institution, but its members are no longer great men. How long can a great institution remain great in the hands of small men? The SC has held its place in the public esteem rather better than the Lok Sabha, despite the occasional allegation of financial impropriety. Parliament, the...