Solutions to Change

A central government employee is entitled to 30 days of earned leave every year. For the civilian staff, there are eight more days of casual leave and 20 days of half-pay leave, which can be commuted to medical leave. In addition, there are two restricted holidays and 17 “gazetted” holidays including the three national holidays. If you add to this 52 Saturdays and 52 Sundays every year, when government offices are closed, the total number of holidays a central government employee can enjoy is 171days. That is close to half the number of days in a year. This context has to be kept in mind before judging what may well turn out to be the Sixth Pay Commission’s most controversial recommendation. To be sure, the Pay Commission does not favour a reduction in the number of earned or casual leave to which an employee is entitled. Nor does it propose switching back to the six-day week system, in vogue before Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister introduced five-day weeks in the late 1980s. There is no...

When a politician or civil servant takes a bribe we call it corruption. Corruption is also when the political elite steal from the state. It means the state can’t train nurses or teachers. Nor can it pay judges properly, so the corrupt get away with it. When corrupt doctors steal medicines from state hospitals and sell them privately, poor people are paying for treatment that should be free. If they can’t afford it, they do without. Goods, people and money move around the world more than ever before. But too often public money finds its way into private bank accounts. Britain has pledged to: Make sure that aid is used for the purposes it is meant for; Help developing countries fight corruption; Promote responsible business; and Close the international loopholes that allow people to launder stolen money. On top of that, the UK Government has set up special police units to investigate foreign bribery and money laundering. Corruption is wrong and it hits the poor hardest. Find out more ab...

Roads will lead to rural prosperity-Swaminomics-Swaminathan A Aiyar-Columnists-Opinion-The Times of India What is the best way of reducing poverty? The UPA government has highlighted its rural employment guarantee scheme (NERGA). It has allotted huge sums to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (education for all) and irrigation. It has increased spending on rural electrification and health. And it ordains subsidies worth tens of thousands of crores for fertilisers, electricity and rural credit. But are these the best ways to reduce poverty and stimulate growth in rural areas? I have long argued that rural areas need, above all, connectivity. The cities have been connected to the global economy and have taken off. Do the same for rural areas, and they will take off too. Today, alas, many villages are not even connected by road or telecom to the closest town, let alone the world. Roads are not, of course, the only things that matter - other rural projects and policies matter a great deal too. But conn...

Manu Sankar. Researcher, Delhi India is a land of small farmers. 650 million of her 1.2 billion people are living on the land and 80 percent farmers are owning less than two hectares of land. In other words the land provides livelihood security for 65 percent of the people and the small farmers of the country provide food security for over one billion of the population. Policies driven by corporate globalisation are pushing farmers off the land and peasants out of agriculture. This is not a natural evolutionary process. It is a violent and imposed process. More than 1,50,000 farmers have committed suicide in India due to distortions introduced in agriculture as a result of trade liberalization. The killing of peasants in Kalinga nagar and Nandigram who were resisting land acquisition is another aspect of the violence involved in the forced uprooting of India’s farmers. It is also depressing to know that the Government is also least interested to improve the lot of the farmers and the a...

To help farmers, don?t kill the moneylender - livemint If farmers don’t have to repay their loans, why do I have to pay mine?” That’s the question Maheswar Jena of the village of Ankula in Orissa has been asking himself ever since finance minister P. Chidambaram announced a Rs60,000 crore debt waiver for farmers. Jena, 38, had borrowed Rs95,000 for five years from State Bank of India to set up a shop. That was about two years ago. Since then, the business has failed. And now Jena wants the heavily subsidized loan — it carried an annual interest rate of 2.6% — to be forgiven. The debt write-off, the centrepiece of the Union Budget, is threatening to balloon into a subprime crisis of sorts, complete with “moral hazard” and fiscal recklessness. In less than 48 hours after the amnesty was announced, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, had issued a full-page newspaper advertisement. In the ad, Mayawati, who uses only one name, expressed her displeasure that the...

Kerala has witnessed one Harthal and a few local protests in this month itself. Sometimes it is felt that the state known for its welfare policies is very much in tune with the holidays packages to the employees of public sector enterprsies by accomdating hartal calls. The Popular wiki article shows the word Harthal has a Gujrati origin ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartal ). The economics of the Harthal is not only the accumlataed loss of money on that day but has also given the birth to interesting websites like http://www.indiamarch.com/Content-25/HARTHAL-SCHEDULE.html . Economic survey at the national level reflects on the number of lock outs and the number of man days lost in last year in India as a result of strikes and Lock outs( http://www.business-standard.com/common/news_article.php?leftnm=beco&bKeyFlag=BO&autono=315332 ). Some other studies show that there are 80 Shutdowns in 18 in last four months ( http://mutiny.in/2008/02/20/80-shutdowns-in-18-months/ ). If some ...