-The Indian Express Thiruvananthapuram: Thirteen years after a Left government in France adopted a 35-hour work-week to tackle unemployment and allow more time for leisure, the CPM's trade union arm Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) has decided to campaign for the same model in India. Reducing the weekly working hours in India to 35 from 48 was one of the main proposals agreed by the CITU's all-India conference which concluded in...

-The Times of India Nine out of 10 women in the national capital feel that Delhi is unsafe or very unsafe for them. Two-thirds have experienced misbehaviour on the city's streets. Two-thirds work in offices where there is no mechanism to deal with sexual harassment. Close to half feel they were discriminated against during the division of parental property. These are some of the findings of a survey commissioned by TOI on...

-The Hindustan Times In what seems set to provide fresh ammo to its political rivals, the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) is learnt to have raised questions about the valuation of 350 acres given by the Haryana government to realty major DLF Limited in Gurgaon through competitive bidding for setting up a recreation-cum-leisure project. The CAG, which examined the procedures and the competitive bidding route taken by the Haryana State Industrial and...

The total expenditure on central schemes for the poor and on the major subsidies exceeds the states' share of central taxes. These schemes are chronic bad performers due to a culture of immunity in public administration and weakened local governments. Arguing that the poor should be trusted to use these resources better than the state, a radical redirection with substantial direct transfers to individuals and complementary decentralisation to local governments...

-The Times of India The government is all set to crack the whip on India's shameful pharma-doctor nexus. The National Development Council (NDC), led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, will meet on December 27 to discuss bringing a legislation requiring drug companies to mandatorily disclose payments made to doctors for research, consulting, lectures, travel and entertainment. Doctors involved in ghost writing to promote pharma products will also be disqualified. The official NDC document...