After three months of workers' agitations, 30 workers leaving their jobs and the worst-ever quarterly financials, India's largest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, may see a new union at its Manesar factory.  A new team of workers on Friday filed a fresh application for registering the 'Maruti Suzuki Employees Union' to the Haryana Labour department, a process earlier scuttled in July. But this time there is tacit support from the management...

A river of bows and arrows slid through the urbane lanes of Raipur civil lines, coming to a startling stop outside the chief minister's gated and guarded residence in the autumn air of November 1st, the founding day of Chhattisgarh. As the police whisked them away, the tribal protestors told journalists they were asking for the most basic constitutional right: proportional reservation in government jobs. Eleven years ago, the sprawling state...

-The Business Standard   It is not often that the government accepts the report of a committee promptly without detailed scrutiny. But an exception has been made – and with good reasons – in respect of the report of the task force on reforming the public distribution system (PDS). The committee, headed by Unique Identification Authority of India Chairman Nandan Nilekani, has made several valuable recommendations that can cure some of the...

-The Economic Times   Snubbed by former union leaders, workers at Maruti Suzuki's Manesar plant have submitted an application to the Haryana labour department to register a new union.  "They have filed the application and we have got the written statement on Saturday. This union will not have an external affiliation, which is the key point of departure," said a Maruti Suzuki official.  The management was clear from the beginning that it won't accept...

Nothing straight can ever emerge from the crooked timber of a parochial mind. Those responsible for the decision to drop A.K. Ramanujan’s essay on the Ramayana from Delhi University’s undergraduate Arts course argue in substance that from childhood these students are told about the sacred character of the epic. This is why it occupies a special place in the Indian psyche. Its characters are perceived to be divine creatures. To...