-The Indian Express Why the proposed national minimum wage is the wrong answer to questions of unemployment and poverty The recent national labour conference - a trade union love fest with little real employer participation - demanded a national minimum wage. The trade union demand is a predictable positioning of narrow self-interest as national interest but the government's acceptance of their demand is unfair, delusional and economically stupid. Unfair, because it pampers a...

-PTI NEW DELHI: The Cabinet will on Thursday decide on raising natural gas prices for the first time in three years even as the move faces stiff resistance as it would result in rise in electricity tariff and fertiliser cost. The oil ministry's proposal to price all domestically produced natural gas as per a complex international hub and imported LNG-based formula suggested by the Rangarajan panel is listed as item number 8...

-The Hindu Scrutiny reveals 242 men and 129 women commit suicide every day Kollam: As many as 1,35,445 people committed suicide in the country last year. Statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) show that excluding West Bengal, 79,773 men and 40,715 women had taken the extreme step. West Bengal, where 14,957 suicides were reported, did not provide classification statistics to the NCRB. The rate of suicide last year stands at...

-The Hindu While the focus is on pilgrims, nobody is talking about the fate of boys and men who came from their villages in the Mandakini valley to earn during the yatri season It is one week since Uttarakhand's worst disaster in living memory. Flash floods resulting from extremely intense rainfall swept away mountainsides, villages and towns, thousands of people, animals, agricultural fields, irrigation canals, domestic water sources, dams, roads, bridges, and...

-The Hindu Whichever way one looks at the data, there is nothing much to crow about the 68th round of survey Whichever way one looks at the key indicators of employment and unemployment released by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) recently, there is nothing much to crow about in inferences that can be drawn from the data collected in the 68th round of survey conducted during the period July 2011 to...