The UPA-II government introduces with BJP support two anti-labour Bills, the Pension Bill and the Labour Laws Amendment Bill. ON March 24, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government managed to do what it had not been able to do in its first term – it reintroduced the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Bill in Parliament with the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The objective of the Bill is...

Violence is back in West Bengal's Purba Medinipur district as the polling date for the 16 Assembly seats here draws close: Communist Party of India (Marxist) cadres are returning, under police protection, to the villages from where they fled in the wake of the Trinamool Congress' stunning successes here in recent elections. In West Bengal's ground zero, Nandigram — located in Purba Medinipur district — the problem is particularly acute. The...

Questioning the call for ‘change' by the Trinamool Congress, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said on Thursday if this meant the return of the land distributed to the poor farmers by the Left Front government over the past years to the zamindars and jotedars, farmers across the State would never allow it. “The farmers will never let go off the land they have been given, however loud the call for...

Extreme poverty and clamour for firewood have forced some people in Nayagram into extreme occupations. One such is gathering kolmipoka, an insect with medicinal value After walking almost 30km along rutted roads since the morning, middle-aged Bonchu Nayek returns to his humble home, a two-room hut, as darkness descends on Nayagram—one of West Bengal’s poorest villages—with his day’s earning of Rs10. Nayek, whose forefathers were hunters, belongs to the Lodha-Sabar tribe. With...

Narayan Prasad Jain, CPI(M)’s candidate from Bhowanipore assembly constituency, filed his nomination papers on Wednesday and declared his individual assets to be worth Rs 2,41,63,447. The same came as a far cry from his comrade and chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who had earlier declared his personal assets worth at Rs 5,000. The combined assets of Jain, a masters in law and a practising advocate, filed before the Survey Building at Alipore...