Greater transparency is an important step towards corruption-free administration. This is one important lesson from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).
South Asia Citizens Web
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The PDS turnaround in Chhattisgarh
by , , 18 November 2010 -
What’s in NREGA for the middle class
by , 17 November 2010The failures of the MGNREGA are the handiwork of the powerful elite and an entrenched self-serving bureaucracy. Workers are paying the price and landmark legislation is being undermined through the failure of policy makers and administrators to do their job. Finally the country will pay the price in fundamental, basic ways.
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The inhuman AFSPA is our way of handling insurgency
by , 17 November 2010“Why aren’t you writing about Irom Sharmila?” demanded Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Peace Laureate and Iranian human rights lawyer, in a media meet in Delhi in 2006. Sharmila had been fasting for six years protesting army atrocities in Manipur under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). Ebadi’s vehement support had given a fillip to Sharmila’s protest. But the Government was unmoved.
This week, Sharmila completed ten years of her hunger strike. On 2 November 2000, Assam Rifles troops had arbitrarily shot dead 10 civilians waiting at a bus stop at Malom, Manipur. Sharmila, then a poet and human rights worker of 28, demanded a repeal of the inhuman Act and went on her fast unto death.
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A sati temple on university campus !
17 November 2010The temple, symbolizing the now obsolete practice of burning of a woman on her husband’s pyre [known as Sati], is said to have been in existence before the construction of the university. People actually go there to worship after being granted permission by authorities of Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agriculture University (CCSHAU) at Hisar, in the northern state of Haryana in India
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The Left is in a Blind Alley
by , 17 November 2010The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the CPI(Maoist) have, in their respective journeys, reached a blind alley. The impasse is not peculiar to the Indian situation. It reflects the worldwide crisis of Marxism, and is rooted to the historical experience of the international communist movement, in general, over the last century or so. It will take a long time to restore the bruised moral values which are based on respect and struggle for the freedom of the individual – values that are inherent in Marxist humanism.
