Agents of change

Gramdoots, or village volunteers, mobilise people to get government machinery moving

North-East

Assam-type solution

Rajasthan mine workers form cooperatives

Big hikes in rural spending

Funds for MGNREGA maintained at Rs.33,000 crore, same as in 2012-13

Budget holds much-needed rural reform

Proposes to redefine backward region

Victim of its success

MGNREGA blamed for causing labour shortage; cut in budgetary support likely

Soak pit revolution: two villages in Mewat treat their own wastewater

The treated water recharges aquifers

Restore malgujari tanks to irrigate eastern Vidarbha: study

Irrigation potential of 125,000 ha unused since 1950

BPL's dividing line

Government undecided on criteria to identify families below poverty line

Mobilisation immobilised

Interview: Popatrao Pawar, sarpanch, Hivre Bazar

Digging shallow

Sunita's Bytes on Budget

Banks expand arms, but not through branches

Smart cards, biometric ATMs, mobile phones the new tools

Bihar slashes spending on education and social welfare

Coal-based power receives a major boost in the state budget presented on March 12

Findings of Economic Survey 2015 are cause for worry

Survey hints at what we can expect from Union Budget 2015-16

Innovative administrator

IAS officer R Gopalakrishnan made development work for people

No substance in budget's agriculture hype

Grains of doubt

Rural affairs ministry rejects wage payment in kind under rural job scheme

Shock treatment

Nightmarish laws and an insensitive government keeps thousands in the dark

Global grid

Whether it is Asia or Europe, countries find a new mantra: decentralise and electrify

With IT villages

Elsewhere the bubble may have burst, but in rural India infotech is alive and kicking

Question on employment guarantee scheme's success

Maharashtra to divert employment guarantee fund

UTTARKASHI

Houses that hold on