Until about a year ago, the number of Indians who knew the name of Kisan Baburao Hazare, popularly known as Anna Hazare, ran into a few thousand -- small change in a country of a billion people. The former army driver was known for his peculiar experiments of social reform in a village in Maharashtra, in western India. He had received national awards for his social work. By the end of...

MFIs in Andhra Pradesh are paying for the sins of their past. Market for new loans has dried up, banks have Turned off their spigots while the AP government is content to sit back and watch. It has been eleven months since the Andhra Pradesh government issued an ordinance—later converted into the Andhra Pradesh Micro-Finance Institutions (Regulation of Money Lending) Act—which, the microfinance industry hoped, would be the magic remedy that...

AHMEDABAD: A silent revolution has just begun in Rangpar village of Wankaner taluka and its surrounding villages toward sanitizing voters list using RTI. Leading this campaign is Ratna Ala, a resident who is visually challenged and passionate about RTI. In December next year the state will go to the polls for another round of high voltage assembly elections. But seven people from Rangpar , who are now joining hands with...

-The Hindu   Minimum wages to unorganised workers The draft labour policy, released by Labour Minister Shibu Baby John here on Tuesday, proposes measures to ensure minimum wages to workers in the unorganised sector and check unhealthy tendencies such as ‘nokkukooli' in the loading and unloading sector. Releasing the policy, the Minister said that no time frame had been fixed for achieving these objectives because attitudes needed to be changed. All trade unions had...

• Without a clear definition of ‘public purpose’, the land acquisition bill is meaningless • The bill’s definition of ‘fertile land’ can potentially harm the agriculTure sector • Government’s role in defining land will create economic and political problems in fuTure As Parliament debates this month it will, hopefully, move beyond issues of corruption in high places to important economic legislation. Two such pieces of legislation are the land acquisition bill and...