U.P.'s GDP grew at 7.28 per cent in the past five years, but the State ranks low in virtually every area of socio-economic development. IF statistics on gross domestic product (GDP) are the only criteria to evaluate the performance of a government, the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government in Uttar Pradesh will have to be rated as one with highly impressive credentials. For, India's most populous State has recorded a...

Some time ago, newspapers in Britain carried full-page advertisements from the curiously named British Pig Association. This consortium of pig farmers was clamouring publicly that the supermarket chains were squeezing the farmers dry. Alongside them, Britain’s dairy farmers complained that a supermarket cartel was paring down their prices, while production costs went up and up. These farmers too have powerful lobbies; they are still in business. To this end, Britain, like...

While Asian economies boomed before the global recession in 2008, the fruits of that progress did not translate into better wages or secure employment conditions for workers in the region. The International Labour Organisation (ILO)'s Asian Decent Work Decade launched in 2006 was aimed at five priority areas of competitiveness, productivity and jobs; labour market governance; youth employment, managing labour migration and local development for poverty reduction. Today workers' unions are...

JANGU, 40, a Dalit labourer in Paraspur village in Gonda district, 120 km northeast of Lucknow, displays his job card in complete disbelief. “My job card was made three years ago and shows three payments. But I was never given any work, so how was the payment made?” he asks, puzzled. The first entry shows a payment of Rs 1,400 but he received a paltry Rs 100. He never went...

-The Telegraph   The mass mortality of fish in the Karala river has blown the lid off a toxic secret: poison is used to kill some of the catch that makes its way to several homes in Bengal. In the face of raids by officials to seize dead fish in Jalpaiguri, some fishermen today admitted that they use a pesticide called Thiodan to kill fish that are eventually sold in the markets. Lab tests...