Obituaries for the PDS system are a bit premature, based as they are on outdated data and presumptions. Despite flaws like pilfering and leakages, the system shows signs of improvement in certain states. States have demonstrated the political will to invest in the PDS, by putting in state resources to make it work. Cash transfers (CTs) are increasingly advocated as an alternative to the Public Distribution System (PDS). The proponents of...
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UNAIDS welcomes new initiatives taken at New York high-level meet by Aarti Dhar
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has welcomed the new targets set by world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly High Level Meeting on AIDS held in New York. Countries agreed to advance efforts towards reducing sexual transmission of HIV and halving by 2015 HIV infection among people who inject drugs. They also agreed to push towards eliminating new HIV infections among children in the next five years....
More »Land Acquisition: Government as a Facilitator is the Best Option by Diptendra Raychaudhuri
When it was almost certain that the governments of the country were to take their hands off from total acquisition of land for a private project, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council has started thinking otherwise. The thought went out for hundred per cent acquisition by the government. Had this come at the germinal stage of discussion about changes in the colonial Act, it could have resulted in Mamata Banerjee’s face...
More »Contract labour pains by Shyamal Majumdar
In August last year, Maruti was one of the two case studies presented at a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) seminar on contract labour for the way the automobile company had “engaged with its contract labour”. It is ironic that less than a year later, the company is in the middle of an indefinite strike by 800 of its workers who are demanding a permanent absorption of contract workers at the...
More »Low-cost laptops set to roll out after 6 years
-The Times of India Six years after it was conceived, the first lot of 10,000 laptops – the HRD ministry calls it low-cost access-cum-computing device — would be delivered to IIT-Rajasthan in late June, and over the next four months 90,000 more would be made available at Rs 2,200 apiece. The announcement was made on Wednesday at the state education ministers' conference. Ministry officials said once the supply of one lakh...
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