Village Secretariat on paper (Daily Nava Bharat dt. July 29,2014)

Mrs Lakshmi Verma, the President of Raipur District Panchayat has lamented that the concept of Village Secretariat was reintroduced in her district with a resolution of district panchayat three years ago under intimation to the then Principal Secretary Mr.Vivek Dhand but unfortunately the present administrative system has not implemented this scheme with the result the public and especially the student community find it hard to get the certificates from the village officials. Hence they are forced to throng the offices of collector and the chief minister in their public 'darshans' for their grievances.

The concept of village secretariat was coined and implemented by a collector named Mr. Naresh Narad in Indore District of Madhya Pradesh state. Another similar experiment was taken up in Sagar District of the same state in 1980-81 by the undersigned as collector Sagar under the name of Mobile Court - a term coined and implemented by him by staying in the old tents left by British collectors in the remote parts of the district. It was an attempt to solve the problems of the villagers including the disposal of pending revenue cases up to the level of collector's court on the spot. Such a scheme would avoid the crowding of the villagers in the collectorates or C.M's office/residence.

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Cement cos raise prices in south

Cement companies have jacked up prices by Rs 60-100 per bag(each bag is 50 kg) in the four southern states in the past week (TOI, June 23, 2014).

Such a hike all of a sudden without explaining the reason or justification is bound to affect seriously all those construction activities using cement. It is an essential commodity used by small and big players in the real estate business. The prices were already high compared to rates prevalent in the North India. There is a strong belief that these manufacturers had formed a cartel and imposed their price rises arbitrarily enjoying the oligopoly conditions in this sector.

We need to have a strong and effective mechanism at the government to check their moves and ensure auditing of their cost calculations for the last ten years justifying such extraordinary MRP for all these years. 

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