The newly floated Left Front, comprising CPI, CPM and CPI-ML (Liberation), is contesting the state assembly polls on the plank of land reforms and "bataidari (sharecropping)". The leaders of the three parties made a joint appeal to the people at the Janshakti Bhawan here on Sunday to vote for Left candidates in view of the fact that the Congress, RJD and NDA had failed to deliver the goods. CPI national executive member...

The registrar of trade unions in Rajasthan has refused permission to National Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA) workers to form a union, on the grounds that they do not qualify as workmen. When the Majdoor Kisan Sangharsh Samiti – formed by NREGA workers under the guidance of NAC member Aruna Roy – approached the registration office, they were told that NREGA workers don't qualify as 'workmen' as defined in the Industrial Disputes...

Union Minister of State for Rural Development on Tuesday contested Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s claim that the state government is maintaining the requisite books of accounts of MNREG schemes. When asked about the CM’s claim, Union Minister Sisir Adhikari said the state has failed to submit the utilisation certificates for the past two months. The Left Front government has not followed the rules and procedures for submitting the accounts of the...

Once, during a tour of his constituency in Tamil Nadu, Member of Parliament and former Panchayati Raj minister Mani Shankar Aiyar came across an eight-year-old boy. A chance meeting that he says threw light on why India stagnates at the 134th position in the United Nations Human Development Index. The boy, Aiyar said during a brief pause in his United Nations Millennium lecture at the British Council on Sunday, had got...

There’s suddenly a flurry of activity in Karotia, a nondescript village in West Bengal’s Burdwan district. Lately, a lot of politicians and state government officials have been visiting the village, and they say work on a nearly forgotten 14km irrigation canal is going to start soon. It’s been nearly 36 years since the state government first proposed to dig the canal, recalls Azizur Haque, the local panchayat chief. It was to...