Justice N Ramamohana Rao of the High Court on Monday directed the central government to explain within one week as to how it could say that the wages payable to the workers under the NREGA scheme can be lower than the wages fixed as per the Minimum Wages Act. The judge was dealing with a writ petition and a resultant contempt case filed by one Ajay Kumar of AP Vyavasaya Vruthidarula...

Rajasthan wiling to pay enhanced wages to workers ‘Demand justified as CPI has risen to 924 points' Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has accepted in principle the demand for enhancement of the wages of workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme as per the recently revised minimum wage rates in the State. However, the catch is that the Centre holds the key to any hike in the job scheme...

A meticulous study of the agrarian relations in three villages. ONE of our senior sociologists once drew my attention to the distinction between economics and other social sciences. Other social sciences – sociology and anthropology, for instance – he said, pay a great deal of attention to gathering primary data and interpreting them, whereas economics relies on secondary data for its analysis. This is, to a large extent, a fair...

Can the government break its own laws? That seems to be the case when it comes to minimum wages in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which makes the government the employer of the world’s largest workforce of close to 35 million job-card holders. In 19 states, the workers are getting less than the minimum wages in their areas, with the rural development ministry and the labour ministry looking the...

Liberalisation of agricultural trade has worsened food security of South Asia, a study says. The report by Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre (MHHDC), an Islamabad-based research organisation also found that farm trade liberalisation increased the number of hungry people by 28.8 million. Private research organisation, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), organised launching of the report, 'Human Development in South Asia - 2009: Trade and Human Development' in Dhaka on Thursday. The...