The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has released draft recommendations for a social security package for the country’s unorganized sector, which envisages providing life, disability and health cover, maternity benefits and old-age pension to workers. NAC, in a draft released on 7 March, suggested that the different welfare schemes being run by the ministries of women and child development, health and family welfare, finance and labour and employment should be...

The right of women to participate in political life is guaranteed by several international conventions, but transforming an abstract right into a reality requires hard work on the ground, says a new study released here. Published jointly by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) for International Affairs, the 118-page report points out that although 40 to 50 percent of members of political parties globally are women,...

Faulty procurement, rising farm inputs force West Bengal farmers to commit suicide LONG known as farmer friendly, West Bengal is now making headlines for farmers’ suicides. Reportedly 31 farmers, including landless farm labourers and small traders of agriculture produce, in the state took their lives between October last year and January. Twenty-one of the 31 deaths are from the state’s rice bowl Burdwan district. And this is probably a reason the spate...

In an indication that the ruling Congress may be looking to evolve a comprehensive social security package ahead of the next general election, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has started a consultative process with four central government ministries aimed at linking existing and new schemes for the huge unorganized sector. The plan, according to an NAC member, is to issue one entitlement card to every worker in the unorganized...

The Sangh Parivar is systematically following its “Indianisation reforms” in schools run by its affiliates. THE attempts of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar at “saffronising” education attracted widespread attention between 1998 and 2004 when the Hindutva combine's political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), held the reins of power at the Centre. During that period, especially between 1998 and 2002, the BJP's Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi...