When a group of 46 cooks in northern Gujarat—some of whom had been working for up to seven years—demanded full payment for their labour, they were threatened, beaten, then finally thrown out with little more than the clothes they were wearing. The group—which included women and children—were all migrants from a tribal region in southern Rajasthan. They walked for three days without food to get to the nearest train station,...

The only economic or social variable that has not moved since 1991 in India is our 93% informal employment in the informal sector. So, while we have smartly and substantially moved the needle on everything from foreign exchange reserves, infant mortality, school enrolment, market capitalisation, foreign investment, and pregnancy deaths, 9 out of 10 of our workers do not work in organised employment. Informal employment—what President Alan Garcia of Peru...

The economy shows consistent signs of growth. The challenge in the new year is to make development more equitable and broad-based… 2010 was a year of relief that soon grew into despondency. We were relieved that India had pulled out of the deepest post-War recession relatively unscathed. The soundness of its cautious macro-economic management was underlined once again and the US economy is also looking like getting slowly back on...

A sea water farming project and a genetic garden of Halophytes are being launched at Vedaranyam today The year 2010 marks the 80th anniversary of the Salt Satyagraha launched at Dandi by Mahatma Gandhi and at Vedaranyam by Rajaji to establish that sea water is a social resource. A Sea Water Farming project and a Genetic Garden of Halophytes are being launched at Vedaranyam on December 26, 2010 to initiate a...

Adjuvants with severe physiological side effect have been administered to hundreds of children during vaccine trials conducted at a government hospital in Indore over the last few years, and that too without the approved Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). The trials conducted on at least 836 children at the Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya, the paediatric division of the Maharaja Yashwantrao Hospital, were spiked with adjuvants that contain high levels of mercury, aluminium,...