People with agricultural land that they do not wish to cultivate will soon have the option of depositing it in government land banks that will offer them consistent monetary returns. With an incentive system broadly on the lines of a bank account, the public land bank will offer payments based on the tenure and size of the holding with additional benefits if the land is leased out. "A lot of land is...

To plug loopholes in the law on maternity benefits, a government panel has suggested an amendment forbidding the sacking of a pregnant employee on any ground.  The Planning Commission's working group which had been asked to review the Maternity Benefit Act 1961 has also recommended increasing the duration of maternity leave, though it did not specify by how days it should be increased.  The group wants the government to incorporate a clause...

Inaccuracy in reporting court proceedings has caused friction between the press and the legal community On the morning of 10 August 2011, senior lawyer Harish Salve looked upset as he entered Chief Justice of India (CJI) S.H. Kapadia’s courtroom, holding a newspaper that had published an article on a case he was arguing in the Supreme Court. Salve complained that the article in question, written by a journalist at news agency Press...

Civil society pressure may have forced the government to keep proposed changes in the Right To Information (RTI) Act in abeyance but the information officers are quietly implementing them.   The government has proposed restrictions on RTI applications that only one issue can be raised in one application and it should not be more than 250 words. But, it had to withdraw amendments following objection by RTI proponents such as National Advisory...

Deadline to be fixed for conversion of insanitary latrines Employing people for manual scavenging and cleaning of septic tanks and sewers will attract a hefty penalty once the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012 is passed. The Bill that seeks to prohibit employment as sanitary workers is to be tabled in Parliament in the monsoon session. The proposed law suggests that every insanitary latrine will have to...