Governance

The Kisan Swaraj Yatra has been initiated by the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA). This is a loose alliance of scores of groups across the country, drawn from more than 20 states. The network consists of farmers’ organizations, consumer groups, women’s organizations, environmental organizations, organic farmers’ cooperatives, individual scientists, doctors, health activists and others.

Article  246   includes the following clauses:

• Notwithstanding anything in clauses (2) and (3), Parliament has exclusive power to make laws with respect to any of the matters enumerated in List I in the seventh Schedule (in this Constitution referred to as the "Union List").
• Notwithstanding anything in clause (3), Parliament, and, subject to clause (1), the legislature of any State also, have power to make laws with respect to any of the matters enumerated in List III in the Seventh Schedule (in this Constitution referred to as the "Concurrent List").  
• Subject to clauses (1) and (2), the Legislature of any State has exclusive power to make laws for such State or any part thereof with respect to any of the matters enumerated in List II in the Seventh Schedule (in this Constitution referred to as the "State List").  
• Parliament has power to make laws with respect to any matter for any part of the territory of India not included in a State notwithstanding that such matter is a matter enumerated in the State List.

This document provides the details of The Constitution (Seventy-Fourth Amendment) Act.

The document includes:

• The short title and commencement
• Definitions of the terms in the Act
• Constitution of Municipalities
• Composition of the Municipalities
• Constitution and composition of wards committees
• Reservation of seats
• Duration of Municipalities
• Disqualifications for membership
• Powers, authority and responsibilities of municipalities
• Finance Commission
• Audit of accounts of Municipalities
• Elections to the Municipalities
• Application to Union Territories
• Committee for district planning
• Committee for metropoliton planning 
• Continuance of existing laws and municipalities
• Bar to interference by courts in electoral matters

Guest post by Parineeta Dandekar

While this news item was about to be published, Pune received heavy rains on the 4th of October (highest in the last 118 years, 104 mm in 40 minutes and 181.3 mm in 24 hours). While the city administration stressed that this was a cloud burst, this claim was quashed by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD). This was said to a rare event, which was experienced in many places in Maharashtra.

10 people lost their lives to these rains, including three young children and a 25 year old Ph D researcher, Agnimitra Bannerjee, from National Chemical Laboratory, who was washed away in a channelised nallah stretch. Channels prove to be much more dangerous as the velocity of water is high and there is nothing to hold on to, in case a person falls in one of these fast-flowing nallah channels.

This Civil Engineering Course under the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) on the broad subject of Civil Engineering Management is being carried out by Indian Institute of Technology’s and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore as a collaborative project supported by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (Government of India) to enhance the quality of engineering education in the country, by developing curriculum based video and web courses. In these web based lectures, the authors have developed the subject in detail and in stages in a student-friendly manner. The broad group of Civil Engineering Management is structured into modules on the following topics: