GN Bureau | May 2, 2015
Here are five special stories you must read this weekend
International Labour Day
Shramev Jayate (Labour Prevails), the slogan coined by prime minister Narendra Modi, is not as seductive as Karl Marx’s exhortation, “Workers of the world unite”. But the essence of both emphasises the ultimate triumph of the proletariat as sine qua non for the evolution of a new political order. Is labour recognised as an input as critical as capital and treated on a par?
READ: Marxism Modified
The labour has been pushed to the margins after liberalisation. This crisis should be an opportunity for trade unions to revive themselves
READ: Just another day in the life of the worker
Conversation with author Tarek Fatah
After ‘Chasing a Mirage’, and ‘The Jew Is Not My Enemy’, Fatah has come out with his third book, ‘The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State’ (Kautilya Books, New Delhi), and ahead of its launch he interacted with the editorial team of Governance Now on Thursday
READ: The trouble with Islamic State
Punjab drug problem
Punjab possibly has everything a state can ask for, maybe too much. For a majority of its youth is getting wasted from rampant drug abuse. They are the future of Punjab but their present is mired in smack and heroin. Not only is the youth fast turning irrelevant in terms of Punjab’s progress, signs of a greater worry reflect in the state’s weakened backbone – the gradual demise of countless youngsters from drug overdose. This grim reality has created an unfortunate irony – the state has everything, yet nothing.
READ: The story of a lost generation
Nepal Earthquake
From political leaders to business entities to common people, all played insensitive fools by making stupid comments on the tragedy that devastated the neighbouring country. While social media helped families and friends of those affected by the earthquake connect with them, it also played a spoilt brat, showing little restraint in its reactions
READ: It is a tragedy, stupid
Missing girl child
More than 1,27,71,043 girls are missing in India. These girls have not vanished overnight but were killed in the uterus between 2000 and 2014. This is almost half of the total sex selective abortions across the globe in this period and also the highest in the world followed by China and Pakistan. Around the world, as many as 2,45,61,345 girls disappeared before birth in the last 14 years
READ: The data about the missing girl child
Moving to Delhi-NCR for education can be an exciting experience for students from Northeast India. It gives us a chance to meet new people, experience a different culture and become more independent. But living away from home also comes with challenges that people who have not experienced them may not al
The government has reduced the Basic Customs Duty (BCD) on major imported crude edible oils with a view to moderating domestic edible oil prices, providing relief to consumers and mitigating inflationary pressures arising from the sharp increase in international edible oil prices.
In his opening address at the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12, prime minister Narendra Modi did something India`s diplomacy has been building towards for three years: he moved the ‘Voice of the Global South’ from a slogan to a work plan. Addressing the leaders, he argued that t
The Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), a welfare scheme which covers approximately 45 crore beneficiaries across India, provides cashless health cover of Rs. 5 lakh per family per year. It is the largest health insurance scheme which helped crores of poor families by reducing out-of-pocket expend
Every pregnancy requires two people. Yet India`s family planning programme continues to ask only one of them to bear almost all of its medical consequences. The newly released National Family Health Survey-6 (2023-24) confirms just how entrenched this asymmetry remains: 36.5% of currently married women a
Delivering the IXth Chief Justice M.C. Chagla Memorial Lecture on ‘Human Rights and Sustainable Development Goals’, in Mumbai Friday, former Chief Justice of India Bhushan R. Gavai questioned whether conventional economic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP), national income,
