Classrooms give shelter to cows and buffaloes, while students sit outside in the compound. Children carry their own plates to school for mid-day meals and later rush back home on the pretext of washing the dishes, but never come back for classes. School management committees are told by teachers that no one has the right to seek any information from the school authorities. The scenario gets worse if the panchayat facilitators...

-The Economic Times   Over half the country's workforce is self-employed and women receive less pay than men for similar jobs, latest government data shows. While 51% of the country's total workforce are self-employed, only 15.5% are regular wagers or salaried employees and 33.5% casual labourers, according to a survey by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), the key findings of which were released on Friday. The number of people selfemployed...

The strike at the Maruti Suzuki plant shows workers’ rights is still a simmering issue Spanner In The...     * Labour disputes/strikes down from 250 in ’04-05 to under 100     * Strike by 3,000 Maruti workers found support from 65 unions across companies     * Trade unions assert workers’ right to form a union, or to decide which union to join     * Ashok Leyland, Hyundai, Honda Motorcycles, GM among those that have...

The government says the CBI was taken out of RTI purview as it gathers intelligence and safeguards our economic security. Doesn’t the RTI already have provisions against giving out sensitive information? Section 8(1) of the RTI Act gives all the protection these agencies need. If the CBI does not want to reveal certain aspects of their investigation, they can do so as guided by the RTI Act. There are provisions made...

-The Economic Times   All public data-from that on glacier meltdowns to monsoon charts to benami land--will be freely available at the click of a mouse with the launch of a national data portal next month. Modeled on US chief information officer Vivek Kundra's Data.gov.us project, the science and technology ministry's portal-- data.gov.in--aims to democratize data, and make the government more "open". "We plan to launch data.gov.in by next month. Once the National...