Organizations in Visakha District are on a padayatra from 19 Jan 2008 through villages, meeting Mandal Parishad Development Offices in several blocks to demand meaningful implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREGA) program.  AID supports NREGA work of some of these groups.

ketan.bhatt asked, Can I file RTI to get/inspect minutes of meetings of Board of Directors, of say IIT, and various policy making bodies of IIT?   Shailesh Gandhi answers, Yes.

kgirish asked, Hi Shailesh, Can we use RTI to know how the education cess, collected from us, is being used?   Shailesh Gandhi answers, Yes.

Understanding India's development demands deeper appreciation of world history and current events, making connections often glossed over in mainstream media and even in many history or social studies books.  Find here 20 of the 100 Important Books recommended by P. Sainath, Magsaysay Award-winning journalist and author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts (1996), to his journalism students at University of California, Berkeley, where he is Visiting Lecturer.

AID’s Eureka Child project has taken off to a flying start! It is being implemented in more than 9000 schools across 10 districts in Tamil Nadu. The program reaches out to 1 million children and is working towards improving their reading, math and pre-primary skills at a rapid pace. The cost efficiency of $1 per child makes the scale possible.

Do you feel your say in the government ends in polling booth?  Many of us remain passive spectators of democracy and our duty as an Indian citizen ends when we vote. For a long time, we didn't have an option either. Not anymore!...

Residents of Kausambhi -- Ghaziabad, UP - are leading by example trying Local Self Governance Model, for the first time, in the cities of India. 

This is a report on Local Self Governance model pioneered by Saathi Arvind Kejriwal and his team. It is an interesting effort and has lot of potential to change how Government and bureaucracy functions in the cities.