UPA’s much-publicised scheme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), is not creating labour shortage for agriculture and dairy production alone, but the textile and handloom sectors are also facing the heat on this count. A Working Group report on textile and handloom sectors has noted that the scheme was drawing skilled weavers to ‘unskilled’ MGNREGA. It says that high-end weavers are sticking to the profession, but low-end weavers are...

The fourth pillar of democracy would cease to be free if it is made accountable to one or more of the other pillars. Much of the media, says Justice Markandey Katju, the new Chairman of the Press Council of India, is of very poor intellectual level. That, even for a former judge, would be being judgmental — except that sections of the media concerned seem hell-bent on proving him right. Setting...

The newly appointed Chairman of the Press Council of India (PCI) and an eminent former judge of the Supreme Court Justice Markandey Katju now faces a somewhat Hamletian dilemma — how best to suit his actions to his words. And, in the process, how best to also diffuse the heated debate and controversy that has followed some of his recent remarks on the state and the functioning of Indian media. Interestingly,...

A sudden spurt in employment opportunities in Bihar is posing a peculiar problem for the rest of the country. More than 50 per cent of Bihar's labour force which usually migrates to other states is choosing to stay back for jobs. Till a few years back, Ram Vilas worked as construction labour in Delhi. With Bihar's economy looking up, Vilas has returned to the pavilion, armed with a job in hand. "I...

An independent study says some 250 thermal power projects that have got clearances may be meant just to grab land and water resources. THERE have been a growing number of headlines that speak of an energy crisis and the energy deficit in India in the last few years. The disparities in the demand-supply scenario, the increasing prospects of disruptions in the global supply of fuel and the consequent results of higher...