West Bengal: Mamata Banerjee moves closer to keeping her promise to return to ‘unwilling' farmers the land given to Tata Motors. WITH the passage of the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Bill, 2011, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee got one step closer to keeping the promise made to the people of Singur that she would reclaim the land allocated to Tata Motors and return it to “unwilling” farmers (that...

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...

The West Bengal govt's role as a non-market intermediary in an essentially private land transaction is questionable The West Bengal government has passed a new legislation that transfers the land back to those who refused to accept the compensation that they were offered during the acquisition of their lands for the Tata Nano factory. The Tata group has promptly gone to court claiming that this is an unconstitutional Act. Surely one...

In August last year, Maruti was one of the two case studies presented at a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) seminar on contract labour for the way the automobile company had “engaged with its contract labour”. It is ironic that less than a year later, the company is in the middle of an indefinite strike by 800 of its workers who are demanding a permanent absorption of contract workers at the...

Winter in the Indian capital is a season of mists, minus the mellow fruitfulness. The air becomes charged with toxic emissions and particles that cannot disperse due to a meteorological phenomenon called "atmospheric inversion". According to B.P. Yadav, scientist with the meteorological department, atmospheric inversion is caused by a warming of the upper layers of the atmosphere, trapping colder air on the surface and, with it, vehicular and industrial emissions. "The immediate...