The Centre on Monday revised the wage rate under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and has decided to amend the Act to remove the existing disparity in minimum wage, even as the matter is scheduled to come up before the Supreme Court on April 9. The revision in the wage rate indexed to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labour (CPIAL) will come into effect on April 1...

The arrest of Syed Mohammad Ahmad Kazmi in connection with the bomb attack on an Israeli embassy car raises many questions. AN uneasy silence fills the streets of B.K. Dutt Colony near the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. Named after the revolutionary freedom fighter Batukeshwar Dutt, who, along with Bhagat Singh, threw bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly on April 8, 1929, the nondescript colony has been...

The Budget provides proof of the United Progressive Alliance government having forgotten the importance of its own “flagship schemes”. BUDGET 2012-13 provides conclusive proof that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has lost its way. It has managed the remarkable feat of upsetting almost everyone and making no one happy. The Budget is highly regressive in both taxation and spending terms and will raise prices of essentials, so aam aurat and...

The proposed amendments to marriage laws lack the detail to guarantee women their full due   The cabinet’s decision to clear a bill providing for amendment to marriage laws has evoked mixed reactions within women’s organisations. While the introduction of the notion of matrimonial property within Indian family laws is a welcome move, the manner in which it is being done seems hasty and without due consideration of its implementability. There is...

Even as the opposition took the government to task for tweaking consumption data to show that the number of poor in India has declined, as first highlighted on Monday by Mint columnist Himanshu, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia defended the methodology used for the calculation by the plan panel. Ahluwalia said the inclusion of money spent on the mid-day meal scheme in so-called private household expenditure was correct because...