In a big embarrassment to the Centre and Delhi government ahead of the Commonwealth Games, a committee appointed by the Delhi High Court has said that workers at Games-related construction sites were not being paid minimum wages and were being made to work overtime for no extra money. The four-member committee was set up to inquire into allegations levelled in a PIL which said conditions of workers at construction sites...

Government today claimed that the problem of migrant labourers is being solved gradually through several Bharat Nirman schemes and rural job guarantee programme, NREGA. Labour Minister Mallikarjun Kharge said in Rajya Sabha during Question Hour that schemes like NREGA, which provides 100 days of guaranteed employment to the rural poor, and Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) along with other Bharat Nirman schemes have been beneficial for labourers. "NREGA and...

Much of the daylight robbery in the name of Commonwealth Games has been justified in the name of "National Prestige" and "World class aspirations. Whether all these surreptitious measures will eventually deliver the games is an open question? The Commonwealth is a 'friendly' association of those 72 colonies which were once part of the British Empire and rose to free nationhood - some through protracted struggle and others through negotiation. In...

For more than seven years, Babar Ali, 17, has been teaching children from poor families for free at a school he founded in a West Bengal village, while studying at another school. Ali opened the Ananda Shiksha Niketan at Gangapur village in Murshidabad district in 2002, when he was just nine. Today, the school has more than 800 students. Another 200 have applied to join in the next session—making it larger...

Though many Migrant Workers from south Madhya Pradesh have died of the incurable workplace disease called silicosis contracted from inhaling quartz dust in stone crushing factories in Gujarat, the public health system has carried out no comprehensive survey to identify the disease, which is often passed off as tuberculosis, many factories have not installed anti-pollution systems, and the NHRC has been sitting on the case since 2006 “He kept coughing…became more...