The Union government is reneging on its legal obligation to pay minimum wages, even to the most deprived sections of the population, in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. If anyone wants to study the capacity of India's policymakers to turn a progressive piece of legislation upside down, the wage policy under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is a good place to...

Ahead of the Central government's proposal to table the land acquisition amendment bill during the winter session, representatives of over 300 villages in Delhi are congregating to push the demand of abolishing the archaic rules, which they claim are against farmers. The mahapanchayat, which will be held at Mahipalpur on Sunday would largely talk about how the existing laws, including the Delhi Land Reforms Act, give absolute power to the government...

The Andhra Pradesh Police on Friday said it has arrested three people working with SKS Microfinance and Spandana on a complaint of harassment by a borrower, and might book the companies' respective promoters Vikram Akula and Padmaja Reddy under a new Ordinance to check coercive methods of loan recovery. The borrower, Ammulu, filed the complaint with the Yemmiganur police station in Kurnool district, about 270 km from Hyderabad, last night. A...

Seventy-year-old Dau Singh is dancing to the tune of a parody music being belted out in the background by a group of people sitting on the pavement. The song urges people to write letters to their brethren and come there to join the fight. "Come on mazdoors, get into the act to get what you deserve," urges the song. The venue is the Statue Circle in Jaipur, where hundreds of...

The members of the Meena Gupta Committee , who argued for cancellation of clearances for the Posco project in Orissa, on Tuesday began to mount pressure on the government to accept their view. Three members of the review panel — former director of the Forest Survey of India Devendra Pandey, civil rights activist and advocate V Suresh and tribal affairs expert Urmila Pingle — have submitted their response to the minority...