-The Hindu District Mineral Foundations were set up to protect the interests of Adivasi communities who have borne the costs of mining. But they are flawed in their current form Through 2011-13, dogged investigators from the Justice M. B. Shah Commission on illegal mining toured the rust-red villages, forests and rivers of northern Odisha, and trawled through reams of official records including from the environment, minerals, railways, and revenue departments. They met...

-DNA The nationwide one day strike according to the trade unions is supposed to be the biggest strike ever in the country. This protest is a strike against the anti-worker economic policies of the government. 10 central trade unions have declared a nation-wide strike on September 2 which is said to impact essential services. This strike is to protest against the changes that have been made in the labour laws by...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's labour arm has walked out of the countrywide strike that 11 unions had called on September 2 to press for a 12-point charter of demands. A recent government survey had ranked the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) as India's largest trade union body with a membership of 62 lakh. Congress-affiliated Intuc came a distant second with 39 lakh members while the CPI's labour wing, Aituc,...

-The Indian Express Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Bill justifies its need to make procedural parts of these decades old laws simple and to mitigate undue hardship that people have to suffer. Gandhinagar: The Assembly on Thursday passed two key bills to help facilitate rapid industrialisation and urbanisation in Gujarat. While the Gujarat Agricultural land ceiling (Amendment) Bill, 2015, proposes use of surplus farm land for industrial purpose, the Gujarat Tenancy...

-Economic and Political Weekly A survey to identify who the poor are and how many are actually poor is necessary if programmes and benefits targeted at the needy are to reach them. The Socio Economic Caste Census, of which partial results have been published, was intended to do this. Yet, even a cursory look at the figures indicates that they call for a willing suspension of disbelief. N C Saxena (naresh.saxena@gmail.com) was...