—PTI The Cabinet on Sunday approved a Rs. 2,350-crore package for crisis-ridden handloom weavers, mostly concentrated in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. The package is part of a Rs. 6,234-crore scheme for handloom weavers announced last month by Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma at Varanasi following an advice from AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi, who is extensively touring U.P. in the run-up to Assembly elections. The package comprised Rs. 3,880 crore for the loan...

UPA’s much-publicised scheme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), is not creating labour shortage for agriculture and dairy production alone, but the textile and handloom sectors are also facing the heat on this count. A Working Group report on textile and handloom sectors has noted that the scheme was drawing skilled weavers to ‘unskilled’ MGNREGA. It says that high-end weavers are sticking to the profession, but low-end weavers are...

A thinking government, regional or central, would ensure sustainable wages for skilled artisans and help them market the handcrafted products, instead of letting them join the NREGS queue. The design and execution of the much-touted National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) are likely to leave a lasting impact on some areas of our economy. Surely, the prototype version did not foresee that it would act as a catalyst for changes that...

India's rural innovators have proved that ordinary people are indeed capable of extraordinary inventions. Despite many constraints -- lack of education and severe cash crunch -- most of them have succeeded in using technology cost-effectively to build ingenious products. A washing-cum-exercise machine, hand operated water lifting device, portable smokeless stove, automatic food making machine, solar mosquito killer, shock proof converter, a floating toilet soap are few of the products on display...

The two day 43rd Session of the Indian Labour Conference (ILC), the apex national tripartite body that discusses key issues affecting labour and employment and provides policy perspectives and recommendations, concluded in New Delhi today. The Conference was inaugurated by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Tuesday 23rd November 2010. Senior level representatives of the three pillars of the tripartism, Trade Unions, Employers’ Associations and Government, participated in the deliberations...