88,000 fake ration cards

THE Orissa government has cancelled over 88,000 bogus ration cards detected during a two-and-a-half-month drive by the state’s food supplies department.

Banks expand arms, but not through branches

Technology plays a crucial role in making banking services available to the rural poor. And banks are exploring options. To begin with, the Reserve Bank of India (rbi)  has permitted banks to use intermediaries such as cooperatives or microfinance institutions to provide services in places banks cannot reach.

Perhaps yes, minister

if a minister is to be judged, 100 days is never enough. More so when the minister takes over a ministry (environment) that has reeled under a series of bored politicians with measely regional profiles and no politico-environmental agenda. Jairam Ramesh has it easy in that deparment. It is diffcult to do worse than A Raja and T R Baalu; the ministry got reduced to a rubber stamp under their watch, clearing project after industrial project without so much as a sideways environmental glance.

Urban poor to get flats in multi-storeys

Minister announces scheme for slum-free India the central government has decided to rope in private developers to build houses for the urban poor under the Rajiv Awas Yojana (ray) housing scheme. Minister for housing and urban poverty alleviation, Kumari Selja, announced its launch on September 12. She said all city slum dwellers in the country would be eligible for housing under the scheme aimed at making India slum-free in five years.

At farm's hand

An assured income for farmers will make agriculture viable and ensure food security In his budget speech finance minister Pranab Mukherjee claimed that agriculture, services, manufacturing along with trade and construction were drivers of the country's growth in the past few years. But actually agriculture should not be slotted in the same bracket as manufacturing and services. Agricultural growth averaged 2.5 per cent in the past five years. This pales in comparison to the 10 per cent growth achieved by manufacturing and services in the same period.

Farmers rally for jobs

Karanataka does not guarantee rural employment OVER a thousand farmers marched into the Chikballapur district commissioner's office in Karnataka on January 29 demanding more days of employment and higher wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (nregs). They staged a 24-hour demonstration. The next day, they took out a rally and were joined by 2,000 others. The farmers were from Bagepalli, Guddibanda and Gauribidanur talukas where groundwater is fast depleting.

Pick and choose

Employment plan

bangladesh will introduce a 100 days employment generation programme for the rural poor next year. This is part of the country's plans to widen its social safety nets programme for the poor and the marginalized. Allocations to such programmes are on the rise. The total allocation for the safety nets programmes is proposed at bdt 16,932 crore (Rs 11,232 crore) in the current fiscal. This is 48 per cent higher than the revised allocation of Rs 7,605 crore in the last budget.

NREGA activists who paid with their lives Narayan Hareka (Orissa)

NREGA activists who paid with their lives Lalit Mehta (Jharkhand)

A palm-sized cd has become the prized possession of Jagdish Mehta, the father of social activist Lalit Mehta, who was brutally murdered in Kandra jungles of Palamu district in Jharkhand on May 14. His eyes gleam as he holds the cd in his hands. It contains a record of a damning social audit of an nregs project in