Rural development ministry ropes in Bollywood actor Vidya Balan to promote the use of toilets. Total sanitation, the official term for ending open defecation in the country, is not remotely close to either total or sanitation, show census data.

The figures supplied by state governments on the website of the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) run by the Union Ministry for Rural Development have been exposed as false to a rather overwhelming degree. While the TSC data have 68 per cent sanitation for the country as a whole, the census found just 32.7 per cent of the country was so covered. Open defecation was the practice elsewhere.

Central allocation for the Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) has been falling in recent years, with this year recording the steepest decline.

Money released for the scheme fell from Rs 35,242 crore last year to Rs 21,441 crore this year, while expenditure has gone down from Rs 39,000 crore last year to Rs 20,000 crore as of January-end.

The relevance of the poverty line for the country is set to be redefined in the context of the ongoing Supreme Court case. The commission will take a view on removing caps on BPL (below poverty line) families. The caps are set by the Planning Commission to predetermine the number of poor in a state or district or block, based on the poverty line.

The latest version of draft law says the govt will no longer have the privilege of acquiring land for civilian projects without the consent of the locals.

Jairam RameshThe government, committed to changing the archaic law on land acquisition, is preparing a new draft of the Land Acquisition Act that will treat the government and private parties on a par when it comes to acquiring land.

Ram Singh, a venerable former sarpanch of Ullawas village, looks around unceasingly, boiling with despair as the void stares back at him. Like Singh, every face in the village is contested by many feelings at once — from agony to anger, staring straight at their face an uncertain future.

Ullawas has been home to over 100 families, who took pride in tilling their farmland to earn their living. It is now on the verge of losing livelihood to the frenzied urbanisation plans of the Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Haryana government.

The Food Security Bill, approved by a group of ministers this month, has ignored malnutrition as a subject, surprising many observers in UN bodies. The reason given is a turf war among different central ministries.

According to N C Saxena, a member of the National Advisory Council that has opposed the government’s draft of the Bill, the women and child development ministry was against including the subject in the Bill as it was in its domain.

A study on the Public Distribution System by a team led by National Advisory Council member and economist Jean Dreze found only 18 per cent of respondents in a survey, of 1,227 below-poverty line households over 106 villages in nine states, wanted cash in place of food under the system.

The demand for cash transfers was highest in Bihar at 54 per cent, followed by 34 per cent in Uttar Pradesh a

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council, which has been contesting the government

Sreelatha Menon / New Delhi November 30, 2010, 0:24 IST

The Prime Minister

Fear dilution of proposals, in favour of pro-market and anti-PDS views.

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council