-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: As many as nine central government departments, including the railways and the ministries of finance, commerce and petroleum, could be in the dock for flouting employment laws governing contract workers. The Central Labour Commissioner has sought compliance reports for contract workers deployed in several ministries, including the commissioner's own office in the labour ministry, which uses the services of 20 contract employees via a private software firm. The...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: There are no uniform rules for female employees in government departments and organizations and they are treated by varying yardsticks when it comes to essential benefits like maternity and child care leave (CCL). Dismayed after finding that maternity leave can vary from 90 to 135 days, a parliamentary panel has suggested that all government departments and organizations should ensure 180 days of leave for their women...

-Frontline Corruption tends to be greater in periods when there is a state-engineered redistribution of wealth in favour of a few at the explicit or implicit expense of the many. Liberalisation is one such period. IT cannot be verified and may not be true. But, the view that the record of graft and corruption during the two-term, nine-year rule of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is the worst in India's post-Independence...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Saradha group's collapse has possibly bankrupted lakhs of small investors robbing them of their life svaings, and has rendered thousands of its agents jobless. The scam highlights the failure of the government and its regulatory agencies to reign in the mushrooming chit fund companies in West Bengal. It also brings under the scanner the Trinamool Congress' proximity with the tainted group. In the wake of the...

-First Post Predictably, the recommendation by an experts’ panel appointed by the Supreme Court  - that trials of genetically modified (GM) crops should be halted for 10 years – has stirred a hornet’s nest. Such a moratorium would include ongoing trials and the court rejected it. This follows on the heels of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture’s 492-page report published in August which asked for the banning of GM food crops...