Like doctors and lawyers, teachers may soon be subject to a “code of professional ethics”, which includes clauses for disciplinary action over corporal punishment, private tuitions and other “anti-community” activities. If accepted by the government, the proposed code would apply to school teachers across the country, from primary to secondary and senior secondary levels, and across government as well as private schools, with the aim of restoring “dignity and integrity” to...

Over 300 workers from the Hindustan Insecticides Limited plant manufacturing Endosulfan near Kochi at Kerala organised a rally today to oppose the unscientific approach adopted by environmental NGOs to seek ban on Endosulfan. The workers demanded that their own experience and the farmers’ experience be taken into consideration as they work with the pesticide Endosulfan. Endosulfan was manufactured and used for more than 50 years across the world and continues to...

Tamil Nadu: The north-east monsoon, 50 per cent in excess in the State, claims over 200 lives and destroys crops and infrastructure.A SERIES of weather systems, including a cyclone that missed Chennai narrowly, saw the skies open up over Tamil Nadu between November 4 and December 5, the period when the north-east monsoon is most active. Most of the 561 mm of rainfall that the State received between October 1...

The issues relating to the victims of endosulfan, sprayed in the plantations of Kasargod district in Kerala, have snowballed once again. “Earthworms emerged from the soil, and, subsequently, died. Then birds came to eat the earthworms and they died as well.”   “Some termites were killed in a cotton farm sprayed with endosulfan. A frog fed on the dead termites, and was immobilised a few minutes later. An owl which flew over...

The two day 43rd Session of the Indian Labour Conference (ILC), the apex national tripartite body that discusses key issues affecting labour and employment and provides policy perspectives and recommendations, concluded in New Delhi today. The Conference was inaugurated by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Tuesday 23rd November 2010. Senior level representatives of the three pillars of the tripartism, Trade Unions, Employers’ Associations and Government, participated in the deliberations...