The Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority Bill is a first step towards granting functional autonomy to the country's nuclear regulator. THE true independence and functional autonomy of the existing Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has been questioned for long. The issue gained further importance in recent months after it was raised in many quarters in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March in Japan. To allay public fears as...
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Job hubs to exclude labour reform
-The Telegraph Labour laws will not be eased for the proposed national manufacturing investment zones (NMIZs), and there will be administrative arrangements for quick relief to workers in case a unit is closed. The government plans to generate 100 million jobs within a decade in these proposed zones. Proposals of flexible labour laws in these zones, which may have allowed hire-and-fire policies, had come under criticism from trade unions and as a...
More »MFIs: Still in the doldrums by Shruti Sarma
MFIs in Andhra Pradesh are paying for the sins of their past. Market for new loans has dried up, banks have turned off their spigots while the AP government is content to sit back and watch. It has been eleven months since the Andhra Pradesh government issued an ordinance—later converted into the Andhra Pradesh Micro-Finance Institutions (Regulation of Money Lending) Act—which, the microfinance industry hoped, would be the magic remedy that...
More »Challenging the poverty dimension of inflation by Madan Sabnavis
A perverse, yet novel reason put forward to explain high inflation is that the poor are eating more as they are becoming less poor. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has been extolled for being responsible for higher consumption, which in a way is a vindication of high inflation. The extended logic used here is that if the poor are eating more and we are paying high...
More »Slavery or Sumangali? Exploitation of Dalit Girls Exposed
Women’s stepping out of their homes to work is often seen as a symbol of empowerment. But what if girls and young women are first lured to work in factories on the false promise of decent wage, comfortable accommodation and payment of a lump sum amount at the end of 3 years contract, and then made to toil for pittance and their labour rights are violated? A report titled: Captured...
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