Even as we celebrate 60 years of Indian democracy, with millions of our people hungry, cynical and insecure, and living under the barrel of the gun (of the state or the extremists), we need to worry about the reach and quality of our political process. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has the potential to provide a "big push" in India's regions of distress. For NREGA to be able to realise its potential, the role of civil society organisations is critical. But this calls for a new self-critical politics of fortitude, balance and restraint.

Credit is one of the important inputs for rural development. The results will largely depend on the effective use of credit, and linkages developed with other requirements for the enterprise. The study on rural credit from various agencies such as commercial banks, regional rural banks, cooperative banks and District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) under poverty alleviation programmes is carried out in two blocks of Hisar district of Haryana. Oct-Dec 2007

India's Targeted Public Distribution System (tpds) gives subsidised essential commodities to economically weaker households. Till 1997, the system had supplied subsidised commodities to