The UPA-II government introduces with BJP support two anti-labour Bills, the Pension Bill and the Labour Laws Amendment Bill. ON March 24, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government managed to do what it had not been able to do in its first term – it reintroduced the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Bill in Parliament with the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The objective of the Bill is...

Company consistently violated tenets of Cement Wage Board Award ACC says it is studying the court ruling and examining options Every evening about 500 workers shrug off the exhaustion of an eight-hour shift to protest outside the premises of ACC Ltd.'s Jamul cement factory in Durg, Chhattisgarh. Closed fists swing rhythmically to chants of “Inqilab zindabad,” as factory veterans who have been protesting for 20 years stand beside young men with little...

Why are the erstwhile RTI campaigners so alarmed five years after it became law? Why so many dharnas, rallies, conventions and hunger-strikes all over again? Part of the reason is that the silent revolution that the RTI has spawned needs to be defended from surreptitious alterations and manipulations, and partly because the RTI activists are being threatened, harassed and assaulted by the corrupt and the powerful, often with the connivance...

This book discusses a new poverty agenda for Asia and the role of social policies in economic transformation and reducing poverty. The poverty-reduction agenda is well known. So is the debate over poverty. No one disputes the fact that poverty of income (or expenditure, as countries such as India do not collect household data on income) is an imperfect measure of poverty, as there are non-income dimensions, too. Consequently, we...

Trade Unions of all hues join forces in an unprecedented manner and present a charter of demands to the government. IN a rare show of unity, and for the first time since Independence, around one lakh workers affiliated to eight central Trade Unions and national industrial federations, including the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) and the Trade Unions of the Left parties, came out on the streets of New...