“Total abolition of child labour central to human development” The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has ordered a survey of child labour in five districts of Uttar Pradesh, where a large number of children are employed in carpet industry and other labour intensive units. The survey will include data on the number of children rescued and action taken for their rehabilitation. The survey directive was given by a jury...
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How to use the existing RTI Act of India to query the private sector by Veeresh Malik
Chances of a single answer to two opposing questions on the RTI Act means there is something to it which the rule-books don’t tell you about—but you can bowl googlies to them, too, when the system expects you to hold a straight bat to their bouncers Here is a single answer to two diametrically opposite questions—“Yes, you can file an application under the Right to Information Act of India 2005 (RTI...
More »Barefoot: Remembering Kandhamal by Harsh Mander
Kandhamal was not a spontaneous outburst of mass anger. And the victims still await justice. It was a terrifying Christmas in 2007 for tribal and dalit Christians who live in the second poorest, deeply forested district of Odisha, Kandhamal. Long-smouldering violence targeting them exploded, and was to continue to rage for another full year. During this time, 600 villages were ransacked, 5,600 houses were looted and burnt, 54,000 persons rendered homeless,...
More »Centre to set up Rs. 1,000-crore fund to promote housing for poor by P Sunderarajan
It will provide credit risk guarantee to banks on the loans Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday announced that the Centre was considering setting up a credit risk guarantee fund with a corpus of Rs. 1,000 crore, to start with, to encourage banks to lend to the poor for housing. Emphasising that developing housing for the poor was critical for sustainable urban development, he said: “To encourage banks to lend in significant...
More »Tamil Nadu’s laptop distribution scheme hit by delays by Surabhi Agarwal & Vidya Padmanabhan
Tamil Nadu’s free laptop distribution scheme, involving what is said to be the largest government order for computing equipment in India, hangs in the balance as all but one vendor, hit by the hard disk shortage created by recent floods in Thailand, have refused to sign on to the state administration’s delivery schedule. “Out of six vendors only one has signed an agreement and we have given a purchase order,” an...
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