If home minister P Chidambaram’s recent letter to West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is any indication, it has taken the Union home ministry seven years to realise that arming civilians to fight Naxalites is a bad idea. How much longer will it take for them to realise that the current paramilitary-based approach in Chhattisgarh is similarly bound to fail? From 2003 onwards, the home ministry has followed a policy of...

The government has firmed up an indexing system of minimum wages for various categories of labour to match the inflation after Congress President Sonia Gandhi asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to ensure that labourers are paid the minimum wages. The Rural Development Ministry is soon expected to issue a notification detailing the payment of minimum wages to various categories of workers, like industrial labourer or agricultural labourer, in tune with inflation,...

West Bengal Industries Minister Nirupam Sen said here on Thursday that a unique comprehensive rehabilitation package for land-losers has been formulated and will be put in place in areas where industrial units are to come up. At an event where “letters of allotment” and “permissive possession certificates” were handed over to 13 investors for setting up units in south Bengal on a total of 1210.76 acres of land acquired by the...

The Centre today announced doubling of funds allocation under a special plan for Bihar to Rs 2,000 crore for the current fiscal, a move that should please Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who has been seeking greater central assistance. Effectively, the increase in central allocation would mean that the NDA-ruled state can spend extra Rs 1,000 crore on power, roads and irrigation within the three months ending March 31, 2011. The decision to...

Farmers in West Bengal whose land will be acquired will now get three cottahs of developed land for commercial purpose for every acre of land. This will be in addition to a compensation based on market rate. Even before the Central government came up with a fresh land acquisition Act and rehabilitation policy, the West Bengal government on Thursday announced its new rehabilitation package for the state’s farmers. Commerce and Industries...