A social audit on the working of the ban on child labour in the domestic and hospitality sectors reveals a sorry state of affairs.  LIKE any normal child, Illyas from Varanasi, a 13-year-old, wanted to go to a regular school and become an important man some day. But poverty forced him to start working at an eatery for Rs.200 a day so that he could feed his younger siblings. He,...

UPA-II leadership is seen struggling with both food act and the achievement of its ministers. Numbers don’t add up Political leadership of the Congress party will take a final call on the number of people eligible to receive subsidised food-grain under the proposed national food security law. While a preliminary report of the Suresh Tendulkar Committee puts the number at 372 million, the government’s official estimates say it is only...

But they are smaller in comparison with those found in Punjab and Haryana Gujarat has acquired the distinction of having the largest number of agricultural godowns and storage sites in rural areas, the National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has said. The number of rural godowns in Gujarat touched 5,293 with a total storage capacity of 14.97 lakh metric tonnes. But they are smaller as compared to those...

The new head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has appealed for greater efforts to ease the plight of nearly 60 million “forgotten children” who are out of school, with only five years remaining to achieve the globally agreed target of ensuring universal primary education. Anthony Lake, the agency’s Executive Director, told a conference yesterday in Dakar, Senegal, that action has not been swift enough towards reaching the primary...

There may be succour in store for the exploited lot of `domestic workers' with a key government panel recommending that `placement agencies', which work as mediators in employment of helps, should be regulated. It has also decided that government should ask states to declare minimum wages for these workers. The panel said that the Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1953, should regulate placement agencies. If this is implemented, the agencies...