Given a positive regulatory environment, banks and other financial intermediaries will certainly be interested in using the smart card opportunity. Dr Arvind Virmani, with a Ph.D. from Harvard and 30 years of professional experience, is one of the most valued economists in the Government. Before he retired as Chief Economic Advisor in 2009, he had served in the Finance Ministry and the Planning Commission. A researcher par excellence, his research papers...
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Unions demand hike in daily wages
Bagisa Shramik Santha and Asom Majuri Shramik Union, two registered unions of the state, have demanded that the tea industry should hike the daily wages of labourers on a par with wages given to workers under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) schemes. The unions have over one lakh members across the state. The Asom Majuri Shramik Union has its headquarters in Silchar while the Bagisa Shramik Santha has it headquarters...
More »SPOs assault truck owner for delivering rations to Dantewada villages by Aman Sethi
One officer allegedly beat him with rifle butt, accusing him of sending food to Maoists Two days after The Hindu reported that security forces burnt down close to 300 homes and granaries in three villages of Chhattisgarh's violence-wracked Dantewada district, Special Police Officers (SPOs) assaulted a truck owner for delivering emergency rations to these villages. According to eyewitness reports, Koya commandos (tribal police corps), during a five-day anti-Maoist offensive from March 11...
More »DMK's free lunches turn costly by N Madhavan
Eighty labourers, both men and women, are at work at Thiruvanduthurai village in Tiruvarur district of Tamil Nadu, about 325 km south of Chennai. They are digging a pond - about an acre wide and six feet deep - funded under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, or MGNREGS. Outside the work perimeter, two middle aged men look on, worried. P. Murugan and K. Govindaraj are farmers from the...
More »Money where the mouth is by E Somanathan
As of 2006, over 43% of Indian children under five were malnourished, a rate that has barely budged since the early 1990s. This gives India the dubious distinction of having the highest percentage of malnourished children in the world. There are at least 53 poorer countries with lower malnutrition rates, including Bangladesh, Nepal, Haiti and several African countries. At Independence, India was poor, so it wasn’t thought possible to guarantee...
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