The strike at the Maruti Suzuki plant shows workers’ rights is still a simmering issue Spanner In The...     * Labour disputes/strikes down from 250 in ’04-05 to under 100     * Strike by 3,000 Maruti workers found support from 65 unions across companies     * Trade unions assert workers’ right to form a union, or to decide which union to join     * Ashok Leyland, Hyundai, Honda Motorcycles, GM among those that have...

Ensuring food security to all is one of India’s top policy agendas today. Given a large mass of poverty in the country, it is not surprising and no one would perhaps disagree with the need to achieve this as soon as possible. But the varied policy instruments that can be used towards achieving this goal draw sharp differences among the stakeholders. What is food security? The World Food Summit of 1996...

-PTI   A desperate government's efforts failed today to achieve any breakthrough with Baba Ramdev deciding to go ahead with his indefinite fast here from tomorrow amidst indications that a compromise was likely in a day or two. For nearly five hours, two senior union ministers Kapil Sibal and Subodh Kant Sahay negotiated with the yoga guru over his demands on eradication of corruption at a posh hotel, a venue totally different...

Development has a multiplier effect in terms of employm-ent, secondary activity and revenue to state, while delay entails loss for everybody. Tolstoy’s famous question, “How much land does a man require?” was answered when the Count who had ruthlessly exploited his serfs was buried in a grave measuring 7x4x4 feet. And that, Tolstoy concluded, was all the land a man requires. Is corporate and infrastructural greed in India today destroying the small,...

The farmers' struggle against land acquisition only shows that from passive forms of protest they have turned to active forms of resistance. THE recent agitation by farmers in Uttar Pradesh against cropland acquisition for non-agricultural purposes is only the latest in a long series of protests by farmers and rural communities, which started a decade ago in different parts of the country and which gathered momentum over the past five...