Manmohan turned down Sonia Gandhi's request He agreed to an index-linked rise in current wages Expressing distress at the Prime Minister's refusal to pay the statutory minimum wages to workers under the employment guarantee programme, a group of 150 social activists has criticised the government's decision to merely allow an index-linked rise in current wages. They accused the Prime Minister of further undermining the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) by...

A generally beleaguered microfinance industry was eagerly waiting for Yezdi Malegam for deliverance. Any conversation about the microfinance business would end with the expectation that the Malegam committee would deliver a healthy dose of oxygen to the choking microfinance industry. The report was expected to be the panacea for all that ails microfinance in India. The report, which came out on Monday, disappoints not only in its inability to meet these...

A fortnight after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said wages paid under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) would not be linked with minimum wages, Minister of State for Labour Harish Rawat today said NREGA was a flawed law, as it went against the Minimum Wages Act. Rawat told Business Standard the section in the law which contained a contradiction with the minimum wages Act made it a flawed piece of...

In a consultation on minimum wages organized by the Bandhua Mukti Morcha in collaboration with the Planning Commission and NMML in New Delhi on Tuesday and Wednesday , there was overwhelming consensus on the sanctity of Minimum Wages.   Speakers included Justice Shah, Aruna Roy, Harsh Mander, Sitaram Yechury, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Harish Rawat, Jayati Ghosh, B.D. Sharma, D Raja, Swamy Agnivesh, and Prashant Bhushan Justice Shah established that repeated Supreme Court...

New CRZ Notification sparks off fears, upsets fisherfolk The new Coastal Zone Regulation (CRZ) 2011 which has opened up construction along the sea has sparked off fears of Mumbai being ringed with high rises and mutating into a ‘desi' Manhattan. It has triggered furious debates on development and upset the fisherfolk who are planning to hit the streets across the country to agitate for better coastal protection. Since 1991 when the first...