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Crippled CAPART to be run professionally, Jairam Ramesh quits as president
- Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has decided to step down as president of the governing body of the CAPART (Council for Advancement of People's Action and Rural Technology) and pave the way for its professional management, besides putting an end to political misuse that has reduced the autonomous body to a storehouse of corruption.
- Henceforth, someone other than a politician well versed in rural development would be anointed as president of the governing body.
- The foundation, to be chaired by a CEO, is expected to scale up activities as private players like the Gates Foundation and the Koradji Tate Foundation are likely to be bulk contributors for the rural cause.
Withdraw SLP against court order on minimum wages, Aruna Roy tells Centre
- Expressing shock at the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's instruction to challenge the Karnataka High Court order for payment of minimum wages to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) workers, the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan has demanded that the government withdraw its SLP
- MKSS leader and National Advisory Council member Aruna Roy, in a letter to the Prime Minister, expressed the following:
- The insistence on delinking MGNREGA and the Minimum Wages Act (MWA) weakened both the legislation and deprived the expected basic protection to the poor
- Cautioning the Prime Minister that the violation of the MWA by the government would only give a free rope to exploitative industrialists, landlords and private sector employers to pay wilful wages with impunity
- Denial of minimum wages is unconstitutional and, worst still, amounted to abdication of duty on the part of the government.
‘Muslims should shed minority tag and empower themselves'
- Muslims in the country should shed their “minority syndrome” and look at themselves as the second-biggest chunk of India's population in order to find solutions to their socioeconomic problems, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman K. Rahman Khan said
- Muslims should understand that the solution to their problems does not lie with the government or other communities but with themselves, for which they should set out their priorities and look for a solution
- It is a matter of concern that the community has failed to unite for their collective betterment over more than 60 years since Independence, he said and asked the community to introspect on the reasons for their deprivation. The community stands divided on grounds of caste, sub-religious and political groups
- Stating that there was a general disinclination in the community towards educating children, Mr. Khan said Muslims should change their views to bring about improvement in their quality of life, family, religious groups and society at large, besides making them competitive with other sections of society.
‘Food security must focus on children'
- The second “national convention on children's right to food” concluded in Bhopal with a call to link anti-malnutrition strategies to inflationary indices.
- Eighty-nine percent of the population of Madhya Pradesh fails to get adequate nutrition
- Shanta Sinha, chairperson of the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), stressed on focussing on the disadvantaged sections in the fight against malnutrition.
- Dr. Sinha called for a decentralised approach to counter malnutrition.
- Any strategy to combat malnutrition, therefore, needs to put food security at the core with special focus on the needs of children.
- The ICDS and other health schemes alone simply cant do the job
- The 25-point charter calls for universalisation and diversification of the Public Distribution System under the proposed national Right to Food Act, universalisation of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, ensuring job security and social security for Anganwadi workers among others.
