Even though the Central Government agreed to link the wages paid under MG-NREGA to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL), it shied away from paying statutory minimum wages in various states of India. Their logic for this: Lack of clarity on who will bear the extra financial burden—the Centre or the states? A letter from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to UPA and NAC Chairperson Sonia Gandhi dated 31...

Mamata Banerjee today asked the government to withdraw its decision to decontrol oil prices, the demand coming on a day arch-rival Left announced a weeklong protest from early next month over the petrol price hike. Both spoke of the burden on the masses as the bitter enemies rehearsed for poll battles ahead: in Bengal, where Mamata is looking to topple the Marxists, and in Kerala, where the ruling Left is on...

NC Saxena , the influential former bureaucrat who is a member of the National Advisory Council, has raised the ineffectiveness of government programmes among tribal people in a paper that will come up for discussion before the Sonia-Gandhi headed council. The government relied on a report by Saxena last year in denying clearance to a large mining project by Vedanta Resources in Orissa’s Niyamgiri hills . This had attracted international...

In a move that brings relief to the rural workforce, but risks creating an inflation spiral, the government on Thursday revised the minimum wages paid for its flagship job guarantee scheme by linking them to the Consumer Price Index for agricultural labour (CPI-AL) for each individual state. Such a price spiral, in case it actually emerges, could roil the electoral prospects of the Congress in the key contests to the state...

For the Human Rights Day in 2010 the Asian Human Rights Commission presents the reports on the state of human rights in eleven countries in Asia; Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea and Sri Lanka. The general picture that emerges is one of the failures of the states to carry out their obligations for the protection of people.Serious defects are evident in the area...