THE employment guarantee scheme has been one of those government interventions in our country which have been most beneficial to the people. As per last year's revised estimates, the government had sanctioned Rs 61,084 crore for this scheme. But the NDA-II government has allocated only Rs 60,000 crore for the scheme in this year's budget – a reduction of Rs 1,084 crore when compared to the previous budget. Even though the scheme is supposed to provide 100 days of employment per worker, the average days of employment per worker so far is just 46 days.
ONE cannot but be struck by the tone of smug self-satisfaction that pervades this report, that India was the origin of most great ideas including the Pythagoras theorem and the Fibonacci series, that Indian universities like Nalanda and Taxila were unique and unparalleled institutions, and that Sanskrit has a literature that is larger than Latin and Classical Greek combined, and so on. In fact the report recommends the setting up of a Mission Nalanda and Mission Taxila to revive old glory.
MOBILE gaming or broadly video gaming has caught India like fire. It has become a common sight to find people fiddling with their mobiles in any public place. Even in interactions within a family or closely-knit friends, ‘phubbing’ (the act of ignoring someone you are with, and giving attention to your mobile phone instead) has become common. The spread of internet availability also is making us give more importance to our mobiles than to other forms of social interactions. One of the major pass-times for the young is to play various games on mobiles.
SITARAM Yechury, general secretary of CPI(M) has called upon the secular democratic forces and the people of the country to meet the challenges thrown by BJP, the political arm of fascistic RSS. He addressed a seminar presided over by Janardan Pati, member of CPI(M) Odisha state secretariat at Bhubaneswar on July 7, on “Challenges before the country in the post election period.”
BARELY a day passes without reports about Muslims being attacked and forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ in various parts of the country. In the first two weeks of July, over a dozen such cases were reported from different areas, particularly in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. As the ruling BJP refuses to act against right-wing goons creating havoc across the country, Muslims and Dalits are bearing the brunt.
Below we publish the letter to the prime minister dated July 11, signed by around 30 Opposition MPs, on the raids at the homes of senior advocates Indira Jaisingh and Anand Grover. Those who signed the letter include TK Rangarajan (CPI(M)), D Raja (CPI), Anand Sharma (Congress), Jaya Bachchan (SP), Santanu Sen (TMC), Sanjay Singh (AAP),
FIFTY years ago on July 19, 1969, fourteen large private banks had been nationalised. Ironically the Golden Jubilee of that event, which had been a significant step in the process of building up a new financial architecture for the country, is being celebrated today by trade unions in the banking sector but not by the government of the day.
THE entire labour law architecture of the country will be destroyed if the Modi government’s proposed labour codes are enacted by parliament, warned senior advocate Colin Gonsalves at a recent meeting organised in Delhi.
THE Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) condemned the Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Bill, 2019, the labour law reforms, brought in by the BJP government and said that the move will grossly dilute all rights of the workers in the country.