The city is teeming with guests. They are migrant workers from neighbouring states who are in the city for work, for better income, for better living conditions and for everything else that makes the city attractive. They are mostly employed in the unorganised sector, as vendors, contract workers at construction sites, rickshaw-pullers or domestic workers. The city does not seem to care for them. They stumble around learning the ways of...

Inspired by India’s “Green Revolution”, Malawi has sought Indian assistance in its “Greenbelt initiative” aimed at raising agricultural output. The southeast African nation is looking to India to tap its huge uranium deposits. Malawi is also negotiating to sign Double Taxation as well as Investment Promotion and Protection agreements with India. “Our main aim is to get India’s participation in our Greenbelt initiative to increase our farming capacity,” visiting Malawian Trade and...

In 25 years, the Narmada Bachao Andolan has introduced an alternative development discourse in India. ON the full moon night in October, hundreds of people from all over India gathered at Bhilgaon, one of the many tribal villages in Nandurbar district of Maharashtra, in the foothills of the Satpura mountain range and on the banks of the river Narmada. The place resounded with jingles, revolutionary folk songs and strains of...

It is imperative that the committee constituted to look into charges of corruption in the Commonwealth Games should also include violations of labour laws within its purview. One of the more blatant and visible scams of the recently concluded Commonwealth Games relates to how the thousands of workers who worked on the games construction sites were denied minimum wages, safety equipment, housing and other benefits constitutionally due to them. In an interview...

In reply to an RTI query filed by the People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) in August, the labour department of Delhi government has said that it does not have consolidated figures on the labour deaths reported during the Commonwealth Games  preparations. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) had separately filed an affidavit in the high court in September which said that 109 workers had died on its sites during...