The payment of wages into bank accounts for work carried out under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has been suggested as a way to prevent embezzlement of funds. The practice has already begun in a few districts. Is this a foolproof system to control corruption? The early experience from a few blocks in Orissa suggests that this process is not free from its own problems. April 26-May 2, 2008

The 2007 National Policy on the Voluntary Sector aims at creating an enabling environment for voluntary organisations and facilitating their partnership with the government. But it suffers from a major lacuna in that it fails to comprehensively address the central aspects of autonomy, credibility and the nature of partnership itself. Instead of assisting the voluntary sector to take on roles distinct from and complementary to the state's development agenda, it encourages activities commensurate with state approaches. April 19-25, 2008

This paper tracks the organizational and financial history of the Integrated Village Development Project (IVDP) and the self-help group (SHG) network it supports in Tamil Nadu, India.

Though the Union Budget was hailed as being farmer-friendly, a closer scrutiny reveals that it gives much less to villagers and the weaker sections of society than what appears at first glance. The media was quick to highlight the loan waiver for small farmers but it chose to ignore the fact that the budget for the crucial rural employment guarantee scheme had not been raised to any significant extent despite its expansion from 330 to 596 districts. (April 2008)

The question as to what levels of services ought to be provided and maintained in the urban areas of various sizes, dimensions and economic activities has been debated at various forum. It has been observed that fixing norms and standards for basic urban services is an extremely complex and critical task.

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