Everyone knows how much food prices have risen in the last few years. Not everyone, however, knows how much costs have spiralled for those who produce the food you and I eat. Data on daily Wage Rates for agricultural operations, compiled by the Labour Bureau at Shimla, show huge increases to have taken place in most States during 2009 and 2010. Andhra Pradesh, for instance, has seen farm Wage Rates – the...

Company consistently violated tenets of Cement Wage Board Award ACC says it is studying the court ruling and examining options Every evening about 500 workers shrug off the exhaustion of an eight-hour shift to protest outside the premises of ACC Ltd.'s Jamul cement factory in Durg, Chhattisgarh. Closed fists swing rhythmically to chants of “Inqilab zindabad,” as factory veterans who have been protesting for 20 years stand beside young men with little...

It is not often that a social security programme the size of Mahatma Gandhi NREGS - New Delhi has spent Rs 40,000 crore on it in 2010/11 alone - faces an existential moment. But, April 2011 will present one such crossroad: the end of the term of a bureaucrat widely acknowledged as the prime mover behind the five-year old scheme. Brought in six years ago to the Centre from her parent...

Sometime this month, Justice N Ramamohana Rao of the Andhra Pradesh High Court will deliver a verdict that will directly impact earnings of the 114 million people who work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the Central government's work guarantee programme. The verdict will also indirectly impact earnings of the 400 million workers and labourers who toil in India's factories and fields for 'minimum wages'. The question Justice Rao...

The population of India’s commercial capital is growing very slowly in the suburbs while it is shrinking in the old city, the preliminary census data on Maharashtra released on Friday shows. Meanwhile, the population of adjoining Thane district has grown explosively at 35.9% between 2001 and 2011, as expensive real estate in the city has pushed people to satellite towns such as Kalyan and Vashi in this district. The shift in people...