Difficult times call for difficult measures. Pushed into a corner by an unsustainable fiscal deficit and various sectors and programs (including the proposed food security legislation) screaming for a greater share of the budget pie, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in India has been forced to do what it might not have otherwise—reduce its marquee job guarantee scheme’s allocation in a big way for the first time. In one...
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Anti-scavenging law only on paper-Ananya Sengupta
Not a single case has been registered under a 19-year-old law that prohibits hiring of manual scavengers and building dry latrines. The revelations come weeks after the latest census data showed 25 lakh households across the country depend on manual scavengers to remove night soil from latrines. Union social justice minister Mukul Wasnik conceded implementing the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrine (Prohibition) Act, 1993, had been “weak”. “The implementation...
More »Microfinance institutions escape charge of abetting suicide of clients-M Suchitra
In 2010, Andhra Pradesh witnessed a series of suicides. These were not cases of farmers' suicides—a regular occurrence in the state which continues to be in the grip of an agrarian crisis. The victims in these cases happened to be the poorest of the poor; most of them illiterate dalits and adivasis. The first information reports (FIRs) of the police reveal that most of the suicides were due to coercive...
More »PTI to shut for 30 hours as staffers go on strike over wages-Nikhil Kanekal
The latest Majithia wage board has recommended that salaries be increased, in some cases to 200% of prevailing rates The Press Trust of India, or PTI, India’s largest newswire, will be shut for about 30 hours from Saturday as its employees go on strike to protest the non-implementation of the wage board recommendations to significantly increase their salaries. The Federation of PTI Employees’ Unions said in a notice that the employees will...
More »Farm revolution: Indian farmers finally embrace mechanisation
-Reuters PERLE: As a shiny red harvester bounces across the black earth into the first row of sugar cane, excited schoolchildren run after it and several dozen men stand gaping in the wake of its swift progress. It's the first time that Perle, a village on the banks of the Krishna river in Maharashtra state, has seen a machine used for cutting the tough cane. "This machine will harvest my entire field today,"...
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