The Union Cabinet on Thursday cleared a Bill seeking to prevent sexual abuse of children, with provisions for stringent punishment for such offences. The proposed legislation aims at protecting children against offences of sexual assault, sexual harassment, pornography and provides for establishment of special courts for trial of such offences. Section 7 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Bill, 2011, does not provide for any punishment if the consent for...

Pranab Mukherjee, India’s finance minister, put the rural economy at the heart of a national budget on Monday, saying ridding the farm sector of crippling supply bottlenecks would be his “focus” in the coming fiscal year.A market-neutral budget supporting agriculture, welfare schemes and the extension of banking services to more people was designed to dispel any sense that the Congress party-led government was in drift after a series of high...

On the eve of the Union Budget on Sunday, thousands of farmers and hundreds of farm widows staged a strong protest at Pandharkawda in Yavatmal district by hanging effigies of union finance minister of finance Pranab Mukherjee and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar. The protesters wanted to draw attention of the government towards its 'anti-cotton farmer policies.' They demanded lifting of ban on cotton export, a bailout package for dying cotton...

At least 100,000 trade unionists marched through New Delhi on Wednesday in a protest against high food prices and unemployment, piling pressure on an administration under fire over corruption scandals. The demonstration was the biggest in New Delhi in years and included members of a trade union linked to the ruling Congress party, reflecting disquiet within the party over food inflation which hit a high of over 18 percent last December. It...

Faced with soaring food prices for the second time in three years, senior United Nations experts today called for greater investment in agriculture from both the public and private sectors to increase smallholder productivity.   “Policy-related solutions are also required to increase the longer-term resilience of global agriculture to allow greater levels of supply to markets as demand grows,” UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Senior Economist Jamie Morrison told a meeting...