Rajasthan wiling to pay enhanced wages to workers ‘Demand justified as CPI has risen to 924 points' Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has accepted in principle the demand for enhancement of the wages of workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme as per the recently revised minimum wage rates in the State. However, the catch is that the Centre holds the key to any hike in the job scheme...

A meticulous study of the agrarian relations in three villages. ONE of our senior sociologists once drew my attention to the distinction between economics and other social sciences. Other social sciences – sociology and anthropology, for instance – he said, pay a great deal of attention to gathering primary data and interpreting them, whereas economics relies on secondary data for its analysis. This is, to a large extent, a fair...

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...

The Union government is reneging on its legal obligation to pay minimum wages, even to the most deprived sections of the population, in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. If anyone wants to study the capacity of India's policymakers to turn a progressive piece of legislation upside down, the wage policy under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is a good place to...

A timely reality check on public policies in the developing world, the Global Hunger Index 2010, (GHI) released by the International Food Policy Research Institute, reveals the disturbing fact that the number of hungry people in the world hovers around the one-billion mark. Although this year's estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organisation place the figure at 925 million, barely a year ago, at the height of the recession, “the...