Construction related projects in the state are facing a huge problem of labour shortage. Labourers are not available even at higher wages and as a result, ongoing projects, including many realty projects, are progressing at a snail's pace. The labour intensive real estate and infrastructure industry is worth nearly Rs 50,000 crore and depends heavily upon migrant labourers from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar besides Panchmahal and Dahod districts of Gujarat. "Infrastructure...

-The Deccan Herald   Under flak for the new Internet rules which are being interpreted as an attack on privacy of a user, the government while clarifying the rules questioned the why critics were silent when the draft rules were opened for public opinion. R Chandrashekhar, Secretary in the Department of Information Technology, in an interaction with PTI said views from all stakeholders were taken and the best practices prevalent globally were incorporated...

India plans to increase its allocation for health to 2%-3% of its GDP over the next five years. Public spending on health was 0·94% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2004–05, which was among the lowest in the world. Private expenditure on health in India is about 78% as compared to 14% in the Maldives, Bhutan (29%), Sri Lanka (53%), Thailand (31%) and China (61%). Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on...

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have blamed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) for shortage of labour, which has led to increase in input cost of the products and eating into profit margins. "Now a days there is scarcity of labourers by 25 to 30 percent in SMEs. There is a high percentage of unskilled labour, which forms the core of employee recruitment in the local small and...

All doctors, who have an undergraduate medical degree from abroad, will have to appear for a screening test before they can practise in India. This rule will also apply for Indian doctors with post-graduate (PG) medical degrees from the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. Doctors with an UG degree from India and a PG degree from these six countries have been allowed by the Union health ministry to...