-The Telegraph After decades, Bengal’s Jute mills are witnessing a steady influx of women workers, The Telegraph on the troubles woven into the trend When an industry opens its doors to women workers, it can expose how regressive its factory floor is. The face of the jute industry in Bengal has changed over the last 50 years; now more than ever because of the large presence of women.  Once these mills were known...

-Hindustan Times A jute mill in West Bengal’s Howrah district has temporarily closed down citing its inability to pay workers in the absence of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes that were scrapped by the Narendra Modi government. The notice by the management of Sree Hanuman Jute mills that threw about 2,500 workers out of jobs was issued around 10pm on Monday, on a day chief minister Mamata Banerjee apprehended a loss...

-Hindustan Times Kolkata/ Darjeeling/ Guwahati: More than five lakh workers in West Bengal’s biggest labour-intensive industries of tea and jute have not got wages since Wednesday when the union government withdrew two high-denomination currency notes. A similar predicament exists in neighbouring Assam and the rest of the Northeast, which has tea estates in remote areas where currency notes will take days to arrive. In Bengal, owners of several tea gardens and Jute mills...

-The Hindu Cheap imported bags are sold as Indian to government agencies for a higher procurement price. The Union Textiles Ministry has unearthed a major racket in large-scale import of cheap jute bags from Nepal and Bangladesh by Indian manufacturers, many of whom were supplying these to government agencies after putting their own seals. The Jute Packaging Materials (Compulsory Use in Packing Commodities) Act, 1987, mandates that jute bags supplied to government agencies...

-The Hindu Government sources told The Hindu that at PDS packaging centres, new unbranded bags were being replaced with used ones. Jute bags meant for packaging of foodgrains under the Public Distribution System (PDS) allegedly provided their manufacturers — in league with some officials of procuring State government agencies, quality insurance inspectors and middlemen — an opportunity to siphon off thousands of crores in government revenue. So serious is the scam that the...