TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

Health: The pharmaceutical industry in India fears that one in five drugs sold in the country are fake. A study undertaken by the by the drug controller general will focus on this.
Transportation: India and France on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation in railways, including constructing world class stations, [...]

The Makings of the “Indian Dream”

The Business Standard features an intriguing anecdotal story about salt pan workers in Gujarat who now run their own company within the industry. Twenty-seven salt pan workers joined hands and efforts to form their own private company, called Sabras.
These workers hold 65 per cent stake in equity and are planning to raise it to 74 [...]

Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Expand NREGA

Last month, we posted about the expansion of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) to all districts in India starting on April 1. Even though the government chose to expand this program, the scheme has its share of pros and cons. A recent article in The Economist highlights the strengths of NREGA as its [...]

Interview with India’s Rural BPO Guru

Its been almost three years since Businessworld India published a feature on Rural BPO, writing about a company called Lason. Lason had just just set up its first rural BPO unit in Kizhanur village, 50 km from Chennai. The unit was the brainchild of Pradeep Nevatia, then managing director of Lason India, a subsidiary of [...]

NGO helps HIV positive women reintegrate into the workforce

One of the most effective ways in ensuring that individuals maintain a decent standard of life is to provide them with the necessary tools to establish independence and self-sufficiency in their lives. Sanmitra aims to do just that by helping women that are HIV positive reenter the mainstream workforce. The NGO also targets sex workers [...]

India’s Manpower Paradox

An article by Meera Shenoy (Executive Director of Employment Generation and Marketing Mission, Government of Andhra Pradesh) focuses on a paradox faced by India - a booming population of youth, but a shortage of skilled manpower.  Shenoy discusses the downfalls of the approaches of a variety of stakeholders - government, companies, and the rural poor, and emphasizes [...]

Evening Edition

India-Africa relations: India and Africa continue to take steps to improve cooperation over shared desires to have a seat on the UN Security Council.
Health Technology: The first artificial heart transplant in all of Asia was conducted in Bangalore.
Voting Technology: Bangalore’s state voting machines will now have the ability to vote using Braille for blind voters.
Quotas: [...]

Various Trainings/Workshops - CSR, Participatory Learning, and Livelihoods Promotion

We thought you might find the following trainings/workshops of particular interest. If you happen to attend any of these events, please let us know how useful you found them to be:
1. Workshop on Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility, 24-25 April, Chennai
The programme will help participants to increase their awareness of the CSR and [...]

On Behalf of Exploited Domestic Workers, A Call for Justice

For women like Meena, overworked, abused, and poorly compensated for 11 grueling months of domestic work, avenues for legal recourse against her abusive “employer” are limited, and in some cases completely non-existent. Currently, there are no laws to protect domestic workers from abusive working conditions, inevitably resulting in cases of gross misconduct on behalf [...]

Midday Newsfeed

Some headlines before you head off to lunch:

Technology/Connectivity:  

Mobile connectivity will be in the hands of millions of new subscribers thanks to BSNL’s $100 million contract to Nortel for supporting GSM network expansion in the southern part of India.  The plan is expected to be completed by the end of 2008.  
On a different note, IBM Research [...]

Midday Newsfeed

Employment: The social justice ministry concluded that the participation ratio of SCs/STs in the NREGA, a rural job scheme, shows that despite the fact that tribals are half the number of Dalits, they consistently outnumber them in the program, and that this needs to be corrected.
Environment: The government is working on a formula to compensate [...]

A New Software that Keeps Politicians As Honest as Possible

Starting April 1st, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which provides at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment to every household whose adult members volunteer to work on labour-intensive public works annually, will be implemented in all 604 districts across India.  Unfortunately, though the program looks good on paper, even its most vociferous proponents will admit [...]

Midday Newsfeed

Renewable Energy: The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy in India has announced a demonstration programme to support mega watt size grid interactive solar power generation projects, up to a maximum capacity of 50 MW, in the country. Similar efforts have been pushed by Himachal Pradesh’s CM, in an effort for more hydel power Public-Private [...]

Evening Edition

Some headlines to start your evening off right:

The government of Himachal Pradesh announced at a three-day international conference this weekend that they are drafting a master plan for the development of backpack tourism in the state through strategic public private partnerships (PPPs).  The government ensured that the plan will “optimise the use of natural resources [...]

In Desperate Need of an Agricultural Revolution

On Wednesday, Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram attacked developing nations’ usage of crops for biofuel, referring to the policy as “uncaring” in light of a relentless rise in prices of food and commodities. 
Chidambaram isn’t the only one getting alarmed about the nexus between agricultural productivity, rising food prices, and poverty - in fact, just yesterday, the United [...]