Turns down Sonia's proposal for statutory minimum wages The battle for statutory minimum wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) seems to be on a slippery ground with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh indicating that the government could at best cover inflation-induced erosion of wages. In his December 31, 2010 letter, Dr. Singh has Turned down the proposal of National Advisory Council chairperson Sonia Gandhi to pay MNREGA workers...

Every time Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh says no to a project, his critics give him a new label: Green fundamentalist, anti-business, anti-growth, obstructionist, Luddite and Dr. No. The job has rarely attracted so much attention, but Ramesh has Turned a sleepy and apathetic ministry into a controversial one in recent months. His pronouncements have stopped projects worth billions of dollars, creating powerful enemies in industry and business. His political colleagues have...

The Raipur sessions court judgment against civil liberties defender and health activist Binayak Sen has provoked outrage. His two-year long detention had drawn protests from the world over. The only substantial charge against Sen is that he passed on three letters from Narayan Sanyal, an undertrial, suspected -- but not yet proved -- to be a Maoist, to the Maoist leadership. It takes several leaps of imagination, or nasty prejudice, to...

The US government was advised by its officials to start a military-style trade war against European countries that oppose GM crop cultivation, a new Wikileak release by the UK-based newspaper Guardian has shown. The US embassy in Paris in 2007, when France moved to ban GM corn by Monsanto, recommended that the US "calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility,...

The Indian economy is moving back into the fast lane, with agriculTure playing a leading role. A new financial review presented by the government in mid-December anticipated economic growth of up to 9% for the year to March 2011, and forecasters believe double-digit expansion is on the cards for later in the year. "Faster growth is expected to continue as agriculTure recovers sharply from last year's drought and inflation starts to...