Points to plight of city journalists and small-town stringers  City journalists employed on contract basis as well as small-town stringers working for small sums are both victims of the lack of effective trade unionism in the news industry, Harish Rawat, Minister of State for Labour and Employment, said here on Tuesday. Speaking at the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Press Trust of India organised by the news agency’s employees unions,...

Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh was heckled by farmers and others opposing Bt Brinjal at a public meeting on the introduction of the genetically modified (GM) vegetable in the country by a US multinational. Ramesh was greeted with protests when he arrived at the Central Research Institute for Dryland Farming on the outskirts of this city for the meeting on Sunday. Scores of protestors, including farmers, activists...

Violence in West Bengal’s western districts has reached crisis proportions. Each day, one or more cadre member or sympathizer of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPM] is killed either by Maoists or the Trinamul Congress (TMC). The Maoists have found common cause with the TMC, a breakaway from the Congress Party in Bengal. Mamata Banerjee, whose authoritarian populism draws from both Juan and Evita Peron, leads the TMC. Backed...

The people of Manipur had ‘histories’ and ‘memories’ that were longer and deeper than those of most other Indians when India attained independence.  Every time one travels to Manipur, one returns humbled. This has been the case since my first visit in the late 1960s, long before becoming a journalist. Active insurgency was not even on the horizon then though some resentment against ‘India’ was evident. Between 1983 when I...

Women’s groups have demanded a comprehensive legislation to address rape and sexual assault. A delegation that met Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily earlier this week, said there was a need to incorporate various substantive and procedural sections in the Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code and the Indian Evidence Act to deal with child sexual assault and sexual assault against women. Archaic definition In a memorandum to the Minister, the...