Dalit entrepreneurs will make a historic journey to Delhi next week for a pre-budget meeting with Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia. This is the first time that business leaders from the country's most marginalized communities will be included in the government's budget consultation process. The meeting is scheduled for Monday afternoon with 40 entrepreneurs from different parts of the country expected to attend. It marks the emergence of a...

A maid hired from a tribal zone without the panchayat’s sanction could bring a legal case of human trafficking if amendments planned to a poorly enforced law are carried through. The changes are proposed in the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (Pesa), which aims to give tribal communities in 94 districts greater powers over land and resources. The zones are in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand,...

Prof Shenggen Fan, Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington DC, said that hunger and malnutrition continued to be challenging problems among 29 countries of the world, and India was one of them. As such, food and nutrition availability should be the major development goals in the national policy of these developing nations. Delivering a special lecture on the second day of the 93rd annual conference of the Indian...

Rural Development Minister CP Joshi has refused to move on a proposal by the Planning Commission to link wages under the national job guarantee scheme to the consumer price index. In fact, the Plan panel’s proposal was echoed by the National Advisory Council chaired by UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi.In a presentation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently, the Planning Commission made a strong case for aligning the wage levels to...

The Centre is Planning to increase the spending on social activities with a rise in government revenue, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said here today. "With rise in government revenues we will increase it further," he said at the inauguration of a Union Bank branch in the Murshidabad district. The government is keeping aside a major portion of the budget for social activities and this share is going up from Rs 2.43 lakh...