Days after Naxalites ambushed CRPF personnel in Gadchiroli, Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh in a letter to Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan has sought empowering gram sabhas in the district with rights to market forest produce, including lucrative bamboo used in making paper. Mr Ramesh said that war against Maoists can not be won by battalions alone and, hence, gram sabhas should be strengthened to win local support against Naxals.

In what could be the first major signal of waning popularity of the UPA government’s flagship rural job scheme NREGS, data compiled by the Rural Development Ministry show that the number of househo

All countries have to take on their fair share of responsibility to ensure sustainable development but not at the cost of economic growth, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh told Finnish parl

A formula converging the views of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has the potential to contribute to breaking the logjam in international climate negotiations, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said on Wednesday. He, however, added a caveat saying that the countries will converge to per capita emission levels at different levels of per capita income and this will make a difference to living standards.

Bhubaneswar: While the Odisha government has been raising the issue of alleged neglect from the Centre so far as flow of financial assistance under various programmes is concerned, the state at the

Increasing use of pesticides and herbicides in agriculture is playing havoc with the farming community apart from resulting in increased levels of water contamination.

A recent epidemiological study has shown the presence of arsenic, cadmium, chromium and mercury apart from much higher levels of pesticides in the water across Punjab, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court today agreed to expedite its hearing of Orissa Government's appeal against the Centre's decision to withdraw its environmental clearance to Vedanta group firm Sterlite

It is back to the 1970s as far as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is concerned. The job guarantee scheme is set to provide food grain as part of wages. The rural development ministry, which found its NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) allocations squeezed in the Budget, has approached the food ministry with a proposal to provide food for work under the scheme.

The scheme, which guarantees 100 days of work on demand to any rural citizen, had a budget of about Rs 40,000 crore till last year. It found its allocation almost halved in this year’s Budget.

The hills and valleys are as scenic, their tribal inhabitants as abject, the industrial interests threatening them as powerful and rapacious.

The Centre is keen to resolve differences with rights activists over the remuneration under its flagship rural job guarantee scheme, which can potentially save it from paying .