A working group on NREGA asks for indexing wages to the farm wage index, besides reducing work hours. Justice often comes with a price. If workers of the country's only largescale wage employment programme are to be ensured a decent minimum wage for 100 days every year, it is sure to make many others wince. For, low wages mean more production, cheaper stuff, and so on. The supporters of low wages also...

In an innovative move, biometric cards will be given to those working under NREGA to bring more transparency in the implementation of the Centre's employment guarantee programme, facing complaints of gross irregularities and malpractices in many parts of the country. A decision to prepare biometric database of Mahatma Gandhi NREGA workers "within 12 months" has recently been taken by the Rural Development Ministry here in a meeting which was also...

Disability activists held a candlelight vigil outside the residence of Union Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Mukul Wasnik on Saturday demanding that more disabled people be made part of the committee for drafting the new disability Act. “After months of relentless advocacy by disabled rights organisations, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has finally embarked upon a historic task of drafting a new law to replace the outdated Disability Act,...

Poverty estimates stumble on differing definitions of the household for statistical and policy purposes Officially, the Planning Commission accepted the Tendulkar committee’s report on revision of poverty estimates after the empowered group of ministers on food security asked the commission to issue a final estimate of poverty in the country. Despite the commission’s acceptance, the ministerial group asked it for another estimate of poor households. The simple reason is that the...

ON May 31, when the government announces GDP numbers for 2009-10, for the first time, factories would contribute more to the national income than the country’s farmers, marking a significant shift in the structure of the India economy. That does not, however, diminish the importance of the farm, fisheries and the forest sector because of the disproportionately high percentage of people still engaged in these activities. Neither does it take...