-The Economic Times Over the last decade the UPA government has tried to reduce poverty by legislating a regime of rights accompanied by the national rural employment guarantee (NREG) programme -spending Rs 1,70,000 crore on this strategy. This strategy would have been fine if the transformation of India from a strong currency, high growth and low inflation economy to aweak currency, low growth and high inflation economy had been accompanied by a...

-The Hindu Developing and emerging economies may not exactly be dazzling in the current overall grim global economic climate of joblessness and sluggish growth. But the region has registered rising employment and narrowing income inequalities, relative to their rich counterparts, since the 2007-08 meltdown, says the International Labour Organisation's World of Work Report 2013. The backbone of this promising story are the middle income groups in these countries, which have...

-Outlook The Maoists want a military conflict as it brings more adivasis into their fold. The Indian state's best bet is in ensuring that it wins over the aam adivasis to its side.   May 25th's condemnable attack by the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army, which ended up killing and injuring over 50 people from Congress politicians to migrant adivasi labourers, cannot be understood without recognising the Maoist party's explicit political aims. These...

-The Business Standard Having quit the National Advisory Council (NAC), Aruna Roy of the Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Samiti (MKSS) will intensify the movement to get minimum wages countrywide under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and a Rs 1,000 a month pension for unorganised labourers. She will also press the government to make it mandatory to have a pre-legislation process for all bills that the government proposes to introduce...

-The Hindu Aruna Roy's decision to terminate her relationship with the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council has returned the spotlight to the ideological divide within the ruling establishment on welfare spending. As the civil rights activist noted in her letter to the Congress president, the rupture came over the Manmohan Singh government's refusal to pay statutory minimum wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act -...