A Bill that seeks to amend the existing law governing exploration and production of oil and gas as well as delink petroleum operations from mining operations was passed by the Lok Sabha on Wednesday (March 12, 2025). The Oilfields (Regulation and Development) Amendment Bill, 2024, is aimed at boosting investment …
There is a great push to make panchayats the fulcrum of rural development in India. But 16 years after the third tier of government was created, it has not got its due. RAMESH Singh Yadav is much sought after. Especially among creditors and moneylenders, to whom he owes a total …
on november 26, 2006, nearly 1,000 villagers of Chicalim, a village on the banks of the Zuari river in Goa, gathered for an unprecedented third gram sabha to vote against the Bharati Shipyard Ltd's plan of building a second ship building yard there. The shipyard, however, has the backing of …
Dhurli village, Dantewada district, August 30, 11.30 am: Armed police in riot gear stand in clusters around the walled compound where people of this quiet, picturesque village are to gather for a gram sabha hearing. They are to decide today whether they want Essar Steel to set up a 3.2 …
Tata Steel has taken every care to ensure that the villagers were fully informed of all plans and practices followed by us in the rehabilitation and resettlement of displaced people, for those in the proposed site as well as in other sites. We are not in position to comment on …
Wayward growth Since 2002, India has been the largest producer of sponge iron, also called direct reduced iron (dri), in the world. Today about 20 per cent of the sponge iron produced worldwide is made in India. The growth of this industry is touted as one of the major success …
Imampur village is in Nagar taluka of Maharashtra's Ahmednagar district, a rain shadow area. For more than two years now, the agriculture department has been implementing a watershed project here, using egs money. But when dte visited Imampur, it found out that while an entire hillock was covered with continuous …
construction work on the Sardar Sarovar Project (ssp) on the river Narmada has resumed after two-years. On March 8, 2006, the Narmada Control Authority (nca) cleared an increase of 11.28 metres in the Narmada dam's height
The work of Tarun Bharat Sangh in Rajasthan has received much attention. There is an urgent need though to question development challenges that go overboard in extolling the virtues of greenery without tracing the hands that own the land and harvest the fruits of public money.
after much dilly-dallying, the Maharashtra state cabinet recently decided to amend the Bombay Village Panchayat Act, 1958, which governs over 28,000 village panchayats in Maharashtra. This is the result of a long-standing demand by activists to confer gram sabhas a right to recall their elected representatives in case the latter …
Politics and migration are two important variables that shape Kerala's social reality. Perhaps they also have an uncanny ability to numb ordinary people to the tragedy -cum-farce politicians enact on their behalf. So, we have politicians duping people with promises they never intend to fulfill. And we have recruitment agents …
It begins at the very root, with the authorities that handle the entire process. mo font class="UCASE">ef can continue to be the apex body for the entire exercise, but most procedural functions need to be delegated to a state-level environment impact assessment authority (seiaa). seiaa could be an independent body, …
the Madhya Pradesh (mp) government is drawing considerable flak over its move to change the state's panchayati raj structure. A state cabinet meeting on July 29, 2004 decided to bring about the first major changes in the Madhya Pradesh Panchayati Raj Act, 1994, and the Gram Swaraj Act, 2001. The …
Last year, Congress chief minister Digvijay Singh lost the Madhya Pradesh (MP) state elections. Two years before, the Communist-led coalition lost in Kerala. Since both governments had fervently promoted decentralisation, questions naturally come to the fore: Was their defeat a vote against the move towards local governance and devolution of …
fixated on extending the ‘feel good’ sentiment to the country’s 67.8 million tribals, the powers that be forgot where to draw the line. On February 5, the Union ministry of environment and forests (moef) released a circular stating that the land rights of tribals living in forests since 1993 or …
Reportedly, bjp senior leader Arun Jaitley has contemptuously labelled Digvijay Singh's Madhya Pradesh government as " ngo -style". Why? Because it spends more on social development - education and health - and not on roads or electricity. I am not defending the potholes made famous by politicians and media in …
There exist, in India today, at least two ways of resolving water-related conflicts. One is the way the conflict over river Cauvery is being managed. The river of woes for Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalitha and her Karnataka counterpart S M Krishna, not a single day has passed in …
STEP I: Just before monsoon, water mangers convene meeting of farmers and allocate labour participation for repair of irrigation channels/tanks STEP II: With onset of monsoon, managers measure water availability and inform the gram sabha STEP III: She decides per capita availability of water; suggests crops to be taken if …
Folk Artistes Gyani Baba (wise saint, literarily), a seven feet-tall puppet with handle moustache, is up for a big task in Rajasthan's Ajmer district. He is teaching the importance of good governance and asking people to fight drought. Immensely popular, Gyani Baba has already travelled to around 100 villages. But …
