-The Business Standard   Only anecdotal evidence has been available so far to back the assertion that there has been a sharp rise in agricultural wages. Now, field data bear out the trend. Collected by the Shimla-based Labour Bureau, these numbers show a roughly 50 per cent cumulative rise in rural labour wages in the past two years. The increase in Andhra Pradesh has been assessed at over 40 per cent...

The food ministry is set to oppose the mandatory 5% ethanol blending programme, fearing diversion of foodgrain for manufacture of ethanol. The ministry has called for the report of the expert panel headed by Planning Commission member Saumitra Chaudhuri in order to "review" the programme. The petroleum ministry was expected to soon send the report to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs for a final decision after factoring in the dissent notes...

For most people in cities, Labour Day (or May Day, which was on May 1) was just another public holiday that nobody thought too much about. On a day marked to give voice to the rights of the Indian work force, perhaps one ought to consider those who have been forced to join their ranks too soon - child labourers. According to government estimates, an astounding 42.02% of the Indian workforce...

Conditional cash transfers” (CCTs) are a new buzzword in policy circles. The idea is simple: give poor people cash conditional on good behaviour such as sending children to school. This helps to score two goals in one shot: poor people get some income support, and at the same time, they take steps to lift themselves out of poverty. CCT enthusiasm, however, is often based on a superficial reading of the Latin...

In the 1920s, a young Tamil girl sang and starred in her school musical. It was, ostensibly, a private event with few outsiders. Yet so exceptional was her singing that Swadesamitran ran her photograph and wrote about the event. Seeing that photo in the newspaper, her household “was appalled” for, as the music historian V Sriram writes, “good, chaste women never had their photographs published in papers”. Today, this seems like...