The Government has decided to introduce major reforms in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) by bringing under its coverage agricultural activities like sowing, harvesting, soil preparation, irrigation, compost preparation and allied activities relating to livestock. Reforms have been planned to address issues of shortage of labours for agriculture-related activities. The job guarantee scheme will now have a farmers’ friendly face and rechristened as MGNREGA II. The...
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Money doesn’t make the landowner fonder by EAS Sarma
The country’s first legislation on land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement is out as a first draft. Here is a sharp critique of the bill THE GOVERNMENT has made public the new Draft National Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation & Resettlement Bill, 2011, which FW has run in these columns over three days. This is what I think of it. In terms of the definition of public purpose, the Bill is more colonial...
More »Posco in south by Ravi Sharma
THERE is money on offer, but the farmers of Halligudi, a hamlet of 5,500 people in Karnataka's Gadag district, are hardly happy at the prospect of 3,382 acres (one acre is 0.4 hectare) of farmland being acquired for a Rs.32,336-crore steel plant south of National Highway 63, which runs between Karwar and Bellary. The plant is to be set up by the Indian subsidiary of the South Korean steel major Posco...
More »Lockdown And After by Arindam Mukherjee
The strike at the Maruti Suzuki plant shows workers’ rights is still a simmering issue Spanner In The... * Labour disputes/strikes down from 250 in ’04-05 to under 100 * Strike by 3,000 Maruti workers found support from 65 unions across companies * Trade unions assert workers’ right to form a union, or to decide which union to join * Ashok Leyland, Hyundai, Honda Motorcycles, GM among those that have...
More »Neti, Neti by Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey
In reply to a question about his views of “western civilisation”, Gandhi is said to have remarked: “It is a good idea!” The resurgence of “civil society” in the past two decades has led to similar ironic comments: “Are the rest then uncivil?” and the like. But there is a serious question that needs articulation and addressal to make the current debate meaningful. Just what is civil society, and how...
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