Trade unions of all hues join forces in an unprecedented manner and present a charter of demands to the government. IN a rare show of unity, and for the first time since Independence, around one lakh workers affiliated to eight central trade unions and national industrial federations, including the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) and the trade unions of the Left parties, came out on the streets of New...

Two key issues Budget-2011 is seen as having failed to address are inflation and mass hunger. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced in his budget speech that the long-promised National Food Security Bill would be moved in Parliament “during the course of this year” but failed to make any financial allocation to back up this statement. Against the backdrop of fresh warnings by experts that the outlook is grim given the...

If women in rural areas had the same access to land, technology, financial services, education and markets as men, agricultural production could be increased and the number of hungry people reduced by 100-150 million, FAO said today in its 2010-11 edition of The State of Food and Agriculture report. Yields on plots managed by women are lower than those managed by men, the report said. But this is not because women...

This article documents and then examines the various benefits that, it is claimed, will flow from linking the Unique Identity number with the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It filters the unfounded claims, which arise from a poor understanding of how the PDS and NREGS function, from the genuine ones. On the latter, there are several demanding conditions that need to be met in order...

The Union Government’s belated decision to establish an audit mechanism for projects undertaken under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has been motivated by a number of complaints regarding irregularities in the implementation of the programme. The Government should have taken the step much earlier, in fact soon after the scheme was introduced with much fanfare as the ruling United Progressive Alliance’s flagship social sector project. But at...