-The Business Standard   Only anecdotal evidence has been available so far to back the assertion that there has been a sharp rise in agricultural wages. Now, field data bear out the trend. Collected by the Shimla-based Labour Bureau, these numbers show a roughly 50 per cent cumulative rise in rural labour wages in the past two years. The increase in Andhra Pradesh has been assessed at over 40 per cent...

-Express News Service   Even as irregularities in the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) have been making headlines, a discrepancy in the scheme was reported from Dumuriput village under Padampur panchayat in Koraput block. Vehicles have been put to use and only a minimum number of job card-holders engaged in the construction work of approach road to the village from the old national highway. The work started a few...

In Greater Noida, farmers resist fiercely attempts to take over their land for the Yamuna expressway and a hi-tech city. IT is a tale of two worlds, one in the present and the other in the future; one living and breathing and toiling away in parts of the National Capital Region and the other beautifully blueprinted and waiting to be willed into reality by the government and its elites in...

After getting a earful about the proposed Areva nuclear reactor from disgruntled farmers in Jaitapur, Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh heard a sobering assessment of the Areva's Finnish reactor project — which is running four years behind schedule, with cost overruns hitting 2.7 billion euros — from that country's nuclear regulator. In a presentation made to Mr. Ramesh and a visiting Indian delegation in Finland earlier this week, Finnish regulator STUK...

Amidst protest from anti-Posco activists, Orissa government on Wednesday resumed land acquisition work for Korean steel major’s proposed $12,000 (Rs 54,000 crore) steel plant near Paradip in Jagatsinghpur district, following union ministry for environment and forest’s final forest clearance to the project on May 2. Jagatsinghpur collector NC Jena said the teams comprising officials from the revenue department and Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IIDO) were involved in the land acquisition process....