In the hue and cry over minimum wages under NREGS, battle lines have been drawn between those who favour central government hiking minimum wage rates to the state minimum, and others asserting that the two must be delinked. While the former invoke 'a right to livelihood', the latter point to the NREGS being 'the employer of the last resort and the imperative of better targeting'. While these views have some merit,...

The chairman of Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), Ashok Gulati, is a well-known proponent of reforms and an agricultural economist with diverse experience. Prior to taking charge of CACP, he was the International Food Policy Research Institute director in Asia. In an interview, Gulati spoke about the urgency for initiating reforms in the agricultural sector and made a strong case for intervention to check falling wheat prices either...

While, the threats of a nuclear fall-out, borne out of a tragedy that happened in the Fakushima Nuke Plant in Japan, started a debate about the positives and negatives of nuclear energy. The media completely ignored the protests and the cries that were being carried out (in fact, for the last 10 to 15 years) in Northern Kerala as well as Southern Karnataka to ban the Pesticide Endosulfan. Perhaps, after the...

Issues related to transportation of food grains persist in the 293 PDS outlets The Bombay High Court has directed the Maharashtra government to appoint a nodal officer by May 31 in the Melghat region to coordinate the work of nine departments which, apart from the public distribution system (PDS), are engaged in tribal development and child welfare. This post, meant for an IAS officer, had been lying vacant for more than two...

Expressing disappointment with a Supreme Court order that reversed a Madhya Pradesh High Court judgment on rehabilitation and resettlement of adult sons of the Omkareshwar dam displaced people, the Madhya Pradesh unit of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) on Thursday said it would file a review plea. “These cases were filed by the Madhya Pradesh government against High Court orders that favoured proper rehabilitation under the land-for-land policy for dam-displaced people,”...