To plug loopholes in the law on maternity benefits, a government panel has suggested an amendment forbidding the sacking of a pregnant employee on any ground.  The Planning Commission's working group which had been asked to review the Maternity Benefit Act 1961 has also recommended increasing the duration of maternity leave, though it did not specify by how days it should be increased.  The group wants the government to incorporate a clause...

The purpose of this piece is not to defend the Planning Commission on poverty figures but to indicate that the methodologies have evolved over time after considerable research and they are useful for policy purposes if not for linking with entitlement programmes (some of us have written earlier that the poor and vulnerable are more numerous than the commission's poverty figures and these should be delinked from entitlement programmes).  The commission...

Kin of many slain whistleblowers were present at Anna's fast Coming down heavily on the government, social activist Anna Hazare on Sunday said nothing was being done to protect the whistleblowers who play a crucial role in fighting corruption. Families of several whistleblowers who lost their lives in the fight against corruption turned up at Mr. Hazare's day-long fast at Jantar Mantar here. Team Anna said at least 15 people who tried to...

-The Telegraph The controversial poverty data from the Planning Commission has a message for Mamata Banerjee: the Marxists have brought down the number of destitute in Bengal but much more needs to be done. Latest data suggest that the number of poor has dipped by 7.5 percentage points in Bengal between 2004-05 and 2009-10, which covers the last five years of Left rule in the state. Poverty in urban areas in Bengal came...

-The Hindu   Dr. Manmohan Singh Prime Minister of India March 12, 2012 Dear Prime Minister, We welcome the tabling of a National Food Security Bill in the Lok Sabha as an important step towards the elimination of hunger and undernutrition in India. However, we feel that the Bill in its current form has some serious shortcomings. We are writing to propose a simpler and more effective framework for the Public Distribution System (PDS), which requires...