It is tragic that the same government that gives huge corporate concessions and loses money in corruption is fighting over minimum wages. As India's — and by some reckoning the world's — largest rights-based rural safety net programme completes five years, here is a reality check. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has become the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). But in a monumental affront to the...

In a mark of protest against the administrative "bias" over an attack on labourers last year, Magsaysay award winner and Activist Sandeep Pandey today returned the Employment Awareness Award presented to him by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Pandey said that he had returned the award to protest against attack on labourers by Ghanshyam, husband of a village head, in Era Kake village on January 14 last year. He alleged that the incident...

More than a thousand villagers from Chhattisgarh's coal-rich Raigarh district have expressed their opposition to a mine proposed by Vedanta Resources, a giant multinational. Vedanta, if granted clearance, hopes to mine four million tonnes of coal a year to fuel the expansion of its 810-MW captive power plant on the Bharat Aluminum Company (BALCO) premises in Korba, Chhattisgarh. Vedanta acquired a 51 per cent stake in BALCO in 2001, and the...

A large number of villagers who have been opposing land acquisition for the proposed 12 million tonne capacity steel plant project of Posco-India Private Limited in Orissa are now in no mood to give up their struggle already in its sixth year. A day after Union Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh granted conditional clearance to the company's steel-cum captive power plant and a captive minor port, hundreds of men and...

The Manmohan Singh government has moved in to restore the role of civil society groups in conducting the social audit of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in an attempt to weed out corruption from various levels. The Rural Development Ministry is in consultation with the Comptroller and Auditor General to remove the lacuna that had cropped up after social audit rules were amended in 2009 to eliminate...