Education for all, concerted efforts to reduce poverty, enhancement of social protection and political commitment have been identified as some of the measures to tackle child labour. On the occasion of World Day Against Child Labour on Saturday, several agencies including the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), International Labour Organisation, UNICEF, UNESCO and the corporate sector hailed the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE)...

Climate activists in India have discovered a crucial tool in their battle to hold the government accountable on its climate policies: the country's landmark Right to Information (RTI) Act. Passed in 2005, the act requires all government bodies to respond to citizen requests for information within 30 days. Many bodies, threatened with legal action after initially failing to respond, are now delivering information that shows big gaps in the country's...

The Punjab government’s policy to provide Free Power to the farm sector has led to alarming depletion of its groundwater besides unleashing a huge power subsidy burden of more than Rs 3,000 crore, the Planning Commission has said. The Commission has asked the SAD-BJP government in the state to do away with Free Power to the sector and begin charging “appropriate tariff” for it. In a letter to Punjab Chief...

The Planning Commission, in a letter to the Punjab government, has expressed “serious concern” about the “rapidly deteriorating situation regarding groundwater” in Punjab, and asked the state to reconsider its policy of Free Power to farmers, which “is contributing to over drawal” of groundwater. These are unquestionably questions we should be asking. Of course, these questions are embedded in a larger set of issues — the unreformed nature of electricity...

Built into the economic dogma of growth first is the ingrained notion held by large segments of the nation's elite that the fabric of inequality is meant to remain unimpaired.  “The Challenge of Employment in India; An Informal Economy Perspective” sums up the findings of a National Commission set up in September 2004 to review the status of the unorganised/ínformal sector in India (Volume I Main Report and volume II...