-PTI NEW DELHI: The government is committed to labour reforms and simplification in the related laws to safeguard workers' interest, Labour and Employment Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar said on Sunday. Listing a slew of steps to protect workers' interest, the minister said provisions have been made in the Employees' Compensation (Amendment) Act, 2017 to increase the penalty for its contravention from Rs 5,000 to Rs 50,000, which is extendable to Rs 1...

-The Indian Express New and tough rules on ISBN prompt global body to react THE HRD Ministry risks losing its role of distributing International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs) to publishers in India amid complaints of red-tapism and fears of censorship by the government. On March 29, in a letter sent to Minister of State for HRD Mahendra Nath Pandey, the ISBN International Agency warned that it is “seriously considering” revoking the...

-The Indian Express Agriculture’s contribution to poverty reduction is five times more than that of metropolitan centres Speaking at the third BRICS Urbanisation Forum in Visakhapatnam on September 14, Deputy Chairman of the Niti Ayog, Arvind Panagariya, announced that “Without cities we can’t grow rapidly”. He added, “urbanisation plays an important role in poverty alleviation”. Both claims are exaggerated and somewhat misleading. A recent report prepared for the UN points out that, over...

-The Hindu While Monsanto and Indian seed companies spar, more worrying is the confused lawmaking underpinning regulation of patents Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) breed controversy like no other. Little wonder then that Monsanto’s much-maligned Bt cotton has spawned the mother of all intellectual property (IP) disputes in India, involving at least 15 different proceedings in various courts, government agencies and tribunals at last count. Most proceedings appear to have come at the behest...

-The Indian Express The suffering of millions does not create public outrage, much less government accountability. The people of India’s villages carry collective memories of centuries of calamitous losses of sometimes millions of lives in famines. Famines have been pushed into history, unarguably one of free India’s greatest accomplishments. But the same can’t be said about droughts, which continue to extract an enormous toll on human suffering. At least a third of the...