Drought of equity

DRDA faces axe

The institution that administers Centre’s rural development programmes—the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA)—may be wound up. A committee set up by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) last year to restructure this key institution has recommended abolition of DRDA. The committee finds that DRDA is in direct conflict with the Constitutional mandate for panchayats, which are increasingly being assigned the responsibility of implementing rural development programmes.

Grains of doubt

UNION Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has rejected the food ministry’s suggestion that 25 per cent of wages under the rural employment guarantee programme be paid in foodgrains.

Gram sewaks protest NREGS pressure

Gram sewaks in Maharashtra have refused to give in to the high-handedness of the administration for the implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) so that it can be projected as a success. Instead, they have decided to approach the high court to press for their demands like formation of a separate independent agency for the implementation of the scheme.

Made it

Savvy Soumya Misra

Green energy takes toll on green cover

For two decades people from eight villages in Kalpavalli region in Andhra Pradesh's Anantapur district laboured hard to turn a vast expanse of wasteland into a forest. But the effort seems to have gone waste as the green cover is being ruthlessly destroyed to set up wind farms. Enercon Wind Farms (Madhya Pradesh) Pvt Ltd, a group company of Enercon (India) Ltd, a subsidiary of the German company Enercon GmbH, is setting up a 20 MW wind energy project in the area.

Movement for worse

Bhubaneswar Bindhani has not heard of a UNDP Human Development Report Paper, ‘Migration and Human Development’. It is quite likely the authors of the 2009 report did not take note of the fortunes of this resident of Nuagaon village in Odisha’s Nuapada district when they wrote, “migration fosters development of the migrant people.” They also perhaps did not take note of many other people from Odisha’s western districts who migrate every year to work in sub-human conditions at brick kilns and construction sites in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Drought hit

Villages in Jharkhand could go dry by March. The state is facing acute water crisis because of two consecutive drought years.

Strings attached

While covering the recently concluded panchayat elections in Uttar Pradesh, the photographer and I happened to stop at a crowded polling booth in Keliya village of Kaunch district, about 150 km from the town of Jhansi. We were looking for “election pictures”, and a group of five or more women wearing bright blue, pink, green and yellow sarees coming towards the booth seemed ideal. These were the first panchayat elections post the central government’s ordinance that 50 per cent seats be reserved for women.

Spoils of local bodies

This was the fourth panchayat poll when Shila Devi of Nayamatpur village cast her vote. The polls usually were a staid affair, with two or three candidates campaigning on bullock carts or on foot. But this year, the 50-something was struck by the dust raised by cavalcades of SUVs, all plastered with posters and packed with campaigners. Nineteen candidates from her village of 4,000 were in the fray for the post of gram pradhan. Liquor flowed freely; saris and other gifts were in plenty too. Never before did Devi see such intensity during a panchayat election. Nor did Uttar Pradesh.