The Supreme Court on May 7 ruled that natural resources were national assets that belonged to the people and were ideally exploited by public sector undertakings. This obviously implies that local communities, including tribals, living on mineralised land, enjoy entitlements but not prescriptive ownership rights to such national assets. This is an important reiterative clarification defining mineral rights in Fifth Schedule areas that are currently in contention. Whether PSUs should...
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‘Right to Education Act a potent tool to curb child labour'
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)...
More »Shivraj Singh Chouhan, CM of Madhya Pradesh interviewed by Shriya Mohan
Why is Madhya Pradesh ranked so low in the Millennium Development Goals like child and maternal mortality, extreme poverty, hunger and safe drinking water? Social sector allocation has increased only during the last few years. Before 2005, there wasn’t enough money allocated to it when compared to poverty alleviation schemes. Also, it takes time for the benefits of the allocations to reach people and for real change to manifest itself....
More »Free power emptying Punjab groundwater: Montek by Priyadarshi Siddhanta
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...
More »The social question, who cares? by Jan Breman
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...
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