Rolling out a slew of measures for the working class in 2010, the government effected key reforms in some labour acts while also raising the annual rate of returns on employee provident funds to 9.5 per cent. The steps came as the government also unveiled the draft national policy on employment with suggestions of launching of a employment guarantee scheme in urban areas on the lines of NREGA. It amended the Payment...

In a gesture to the growing public disenchantment over scams and corruption in public life, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's New Year resolutions for 2011 include “cleansing” the country's governing processes. Wishing all Indians a happy New Year, Dr. Singh said in a brief statement that it was time to take stock of the year gone by and make a new beginning. “Let us dispel the air of despondency and cynicism. We...

After Congress chief Sonia Gandhi mooted a five-point plan at the recent AICC plenary session to put in place a system to confront corruption, the Centre is considering an ordinance to tighten the anti-corruption regime against politicians. The Congress core group on Friday discussed the possibility of the new law which would tighten the rules to punish corrupt politicians and counter the popular belief that the system was created to benefit...

The historian Ramachandra Guha has famously described India as a fifty-fifty democracy. But even admirers of India as a functioning democracy will perhaps be forced to admit that certain events in 2010 forced the needle to move beyond fifty against democracy. Threats to democracy and democratic rights have never been as evident, and as powerful, since the dark days of the Emergency in 1975-76 as they were in the course...

The government will shortly set up an anti-corruption mechanism in the backdrop of scandals in which the Opposition has targeted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. As legislative measures will be required to introduce certain provisions, it can even pilot an ordinance. Sources said the Prime Minister was giving “serious thought” to this mechanism with a blueprint having already been prepared, incorporating the suggestions given by Congress president Sonia Gandhi at the party...