The UPA-II government introduces with BJP support two anti-labour Bills, the Pension Bill and the Labour Laws Amendment Bill. ON March 24, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government managed to do what it had not been able to do in its first term – it reintroduced the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Bill in Parliament with the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The objective of the Bill is...
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Spot the difference: Hazare vs Irom Sharmila by Rituparna Chatterjee
Irom Sharmila Chanu and Anna Hazare have one thing in common – the ability to fast indefinitely for what they perceive is right. But the similarities end there. She has been on a political fast for 11 years but her silent resilience moves you when you realize the sheer magnitude of what she is single-handedly trying to achieve. Far from the glare of studio lights of television channels and tangled wires of...
More »Jan Lokpal: an alternative view by KN Panikkar
Given the scale of corruption in India, the constitution of a Jan Lokpal will be a welcome initiative. But the proposed Lokpal has the makings of a super-monster. After 42 years of hesitation and uncertainty, an institutional mechanism to deal with the all-pervasive incidence of corruption in India is in sight. What apparently moved the state machinery was the agitation spearheaded by Anna Hazare, which drew spontaneous support primarily in the...
More »Make Sure The Cure Isn’t Worse Than The Disease by Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey
Itself the outcome of a bottom-up movement, the Jan Lokpal bill ironically proposes a centralised framework against graft. Without checks and balances. There was never any doubt that India needs a strong Lokpal Act. The protest has paved the way for its enactment. With the exultation over the anti-corruption campaign’s ‘victory’ quieting down, it’s time to take stock. Nuanced arguments—and indeed substance—have to recover lost ground to take the discourse...
More »Everybody loves to fight poverty by Puja Mehra
It is not often that a social security programme the size of Mahatma Gandhi NREGS - New Delhi has spent Rs 40,000 crore on it in 2010/11 alone - faces an existential moment. But, April 2011 will present one such crossroad: the end of the term of a bureaucrat widely acknowledged as the prime mover behind the five-year old scheme. Brought in six years ago to the Centre from her parent...
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