All rural schemes will also get a common accounting format; audit to begin with MGNREGS in 12 states At a time when the government is reeling under a number of corruption cases—several of these following critical reports from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG)—the ministry of rural development has roped in the statutory auditor to conduct a financial, compliance and performance audit of its schemes. All schemes of the ministries...

Herding cattle and weaving carpets, on city waste-heaps, at traffic lights, in roadside eateries, in farms and in factories, in brick kilns and coal mines, in brothels and in our homes, children of the poor work at an age when our own are in school or at play. What is remarkable is not just our collective acceptance of such diverging destinies of children merely because of the accident of where they...

The Smart Card Project is helping nearly 12.7 million poor people in Andhra Pradesh to get timely payment of wages It was conceived as a vehicle to promote financial inclusion by taking banking services to the unbanked poor, harnessing information and communications technology to ensure the benefits of public welfare programmes reach those they are intended for by plugging leakages. The Andhra Pradesh Smart Card Project, launched in 2007, is...

-PTI   Questions were raised on Sunday about the use of funds donated by the public to Team Anna with Swami Agnivesh alleging that money was deposited in the trust run by Arvind Kejriwal from which the names of major team members were missing, a claim dismissed as made “out of anger”. Besides Team Anna detractor Swami Agnivesh, another former member ‘Waterman’ Rajinder Singh also raised the issue urging Mr. Kejriwal to come...

Full text of the speech delivered by the Comptroller and Auditor General to young police officers at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy in Hyderabad on October 11, 2011. I am happy to be present today at this premiere training institution to address a group of young officers at the threshold of their careers, as well as senior officers occupying responsible positions in the State Police forces. In a world...