Justice N Ramamohana Rao of the High Court on Monday directed the central government to explain within one week as to how it could say that the wages payable to the workers under the NREGA scheme can be lower than the wages fixed as per the Minimum Wages Act. The judge was dealing with a writ petition and a resultant contempt case filed by one Ajay Kumar of AP Vyavasaya Vruthidarula...

Every afternoon at about four, a slight woman named Runi slips out of the cramped, airless room that she shares with her husband and their sixteen children. She skirts the drainage ditch in front of the building, then walks toward the pile of hardened dung cakes that people in this slum on the edge of the northeastern Indian city of Patna use for fuel. Dressed in a bright-yellow sari shot...

POSCO wants to build a USD 12 billion steel mill in eastern India, but the project has faced delays because of environmental worries and protests by local residents concerned about the mill's impact on their agriculture-based livelihoods. Here are some questions and answers about the project, which has already been delayed by three years: What is the project? The world's third-largest steel company wants to set up a mill in the eastern state...

The number of seats for them in ZPs will go down following amendment to Act A recent Ordinance of the State Government amends the Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act and caps the reservation to various deprived communities at 50 per cent. This means that half the seats are available to general merit candidates. This, according to the Ordinance, will be achieved by keeping the reservation for SC/STs intact and reducing the number...

Facing heat from the Andhra Pradesh (AP) government, microfinance institutions (MFIs) acting under a banner called MFI Network (MFIN) have agreed to adopt corrective measures to address concerns raised by the state government. Coming up with a 15-point corrective measures statement, MFIs have agreed to bring down the interest rates to 24% initially to the borrowers of AP only. “It’s an initial decision and our CEOs across other states will be discussing...