-Outlook   Koraput (Odisha): Many Labourers engaged under the centrally-sponsored Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Odisha's Koraput district alleged that 334 of them have not received wages though six months had passed since the end of their work. The Labourers from Podai Khodra, Joba, Bagkhodra and Golariguda villages under Boipariguda block's Kathpada panchayat constructed an 8 km road between Mantriambo and Joba. The road work was completed in November 2013. "Each...

-IPS News   New Delhi: Bhure Lal, a 33-year-old street-food vendor, has been selling his spicy ‘chaat' outside the New Delhi Railway Station for 15 years. But despite a punishing 12-hour work schedule, and a new law to protect hawkers like him, he doesn't take home enough to feed his family. More than half of Lal's weekly income from the ‘chaat', a lip-smacking pot-pourri that is particularly popular with women, is extorted by...

-Down to Earth Studies indicate high food inflation As Met office predicts below normal rainfall because of El Nino this year, a study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) has projected a 1.75 per cent GDP reduction and loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the unskilled sector. The report released recently says that five per cent deficit rainfall forecast by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) will...

-Live Mint   The Musahar communities of eastern UP and Bihar have been unable to escape the trap of desperate poverty India has been conspicuously less successful than many other emerging economies in the scale, speed and depth of its reversal of poverty. But many scholars say that whatever one's measures of poverty, young people on an average have better educational and economic prospects today than those of their parents and grandparents. They...

-The Hindu   Karimnagar (Andhra Pradesh): With the bumper paddy crop and prevailing unseasonal conditions of sudden rains and hailstorms in the district, farmers are being forced to resort to distressed harvesting of their crop with the harvesters by shelling out huge amount. Taking advantage of the situation, the harvesters are charging heavily and making a fast buck in Karimnagar district, where the paddy crop is expected to be around 13.5 lakh metric...