South Asia Citizens Web

New report by SOMO and ICN reveals labour right violations in Rainforest Alliance certified tea production for Unilever

The phenomenon of informality in labour relations is now an accepted fact of economic life in India. Between 7 and 8 percent of India’s total labour force of 390 million persons (inclusive of families and agrarian workers) work in the so-called organised sector, in registered firms, on regular salaries. This leaves some 350 million people in the unorganised, or informal sector, that allows (fifty-five years after Independence) for a work process that remains unmonitored, unregulated, casualised and without access to any official security systems whatsoever.

When the Central Government’s Expert Group and the Tamil Nadu Team met for the first time on November 8, 2011, our representatives asked for the following documents with regards to the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP): the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Site Evaluation Study, Safety Analysis Report, VVER Performance Report and all other relevant documents for reactors 1 and 2.

Early this week, India’s minister for information and broadcasting, Ambika Soni, was asked: “The government recently froze ads to some newspapers in Kashmir that are critical of the state. Are you trying to regulate the press this way?”

book chapter in: Pradip Basu (ed.) Discourses on Naxalite Movement (1967 - 2009) Insights into Radical Left Politics (Published by Setu Prakashani, Calcutta) 2010.