-The Hindu To protest the fallout of liberalisation policy In an unprecedented show of unity, all trade unions in the country have come together on the same platform and given a call for a general strike on February 28. This is the first time since Independence that trade unions, cutting across ideological and political affiliations, have joined hands to register their protest on a wide range of issues arising out of the liberalisation...

For the Government of India the first phase of the national solar mission has been a grand success. It not only managed to attract industry to invest in the generation of an energy considered costly, but also dramatically drove down the cost of producing this energy. In its celebration, little did the government realise that a major conglomerate had subverted rules to acquire a stake in the solar mission much...

The drama in the Rajya Sabha showed that the UPA government was not willing to go even by the will of Parliament. This gives rise to fundamental questions about the functioning of Indian democracy. The year 2011 will be remembered in India as the year of the campaign against corruption and for the Jan Lokpal Bill. The campaign began in January 2011 in the backdrop of the publicity that accompanied the...

The goals of the Right to Education (RTE) Act are unrealistic and unachievable in its entirety education experts and policymakers said at a conference here today, and endorsed the need for more dialogues with civil society, government agencies and educational service providers to bring the landmark legislation to fruition.              There is an imperative need to look afresh into the RTE Act, iron out its ambiguities and...

It will provide credit risk guarantee to banks on the loans Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday announced that the Centre was considering setting up a credit risk guarantee fund with a corpus of Rs. 1,000 crore, to start with, to encourage banks to lend to the poor for housing. Emphasising that developing housing for the poor was critical for sustainable urban development, he said: “To encourage banks to lend in significant...