Team Hazare has been very critical of the responses of the government representatives in the drafting committee. They even said the Lokpal had become a Jokepal. During the discussions, we did not want to do anything that would upset the applecart. We did not go to the media, except for Kapil Sibal who held a daily briefing. The Hazare team did not want a joint briefing. We agreed. We did a...

-BBC   Workers at India's top car maker Maruti Suzuki have called off a 13-day strike which had seriously affected production. The company has agreed to reinstate 11 sacked employees, and the workers have agreed not to form a new union. Nearly 2,000 workers had gone on strike demanding recognition of a new workers union. Maruti Suzuki, a joint venture partner of Japan's Suzuki Motor Corporation, has 50% of India's booming car market. The strike...

Madhya Pradesh is betting cash incentives will curb population growth and improve the ‘life cycle’ of the girl child, but experts question the efficacy of such policies in addressing deep-rooted social prejudices Visitors trudging down the dusty village road are greeted by a giant billboard featuring a smiling Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, hugging two young girls. The tagline in Hindi reads: Gaon ki beti, kisse chhoti...

A thinking government, regional or central, would ensure sustainable wages for skilled artisans and help them market the handcrafted products, instead of letting them join the NREGS queue. The design and execution of the much-touted National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) are likely to leave a lasting impact on some areas of our economy. Surely, the prototype version did not foresee that it would act as a catalyst for changes that...

‘Employment generation’ is the rationale used by every government official from the prime minister to the land acquisition officer to justify the displacement of people for industrial projects. Farmers are aware they are masters of their land but servants of a company. As for compensation, Basu Behera of Noriyasahi, a POSCO project-affected village, said: “I cultivate betel vines, kaju, about 50 quintals of rice yearly and I get coconuts, pineapples, mangoes....