This is a vital information to our postal comrades to keep their attention in certain cases :
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Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Month-long Winter Session to commence on 24th November
New Delhi: Winter session of
Parliament will start from November 24 and conclude on December 23 during which
a heavy legislative agenda is on the cards. The Cabinet Committee on
Parliamentary Affairs headed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday
recommended the dates to the President.
The month-long session will have a total of 22
sittings in which four days have been earmarked for Private Members' business.
A total of 67 bills 59 in Rajya Sabha and eight in Lok Sabha are pending and
the government will push for passage of "at least 30 to 35"
legislations, a senior minister said.
This will be the second major session since the Narendra Modi Government took
over in May.
The long wait for finalisation of seating arrangement in Lok Sabha is expected
to be over before the session commences, almost six months after the
constitution of the new House.
"We expect the arrangement to be in place before the winter session,"
said an official at Parliament over the exercise which has dragged on after the
declaration of the results of the 16th Lok Sabha polls on May 16.
Average number of sittings in the past five Winter sessions has been 22 and the
dates were decided based on precedents, source said.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Law
Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister Anant Kumar
and Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu are members of the
Committee.
HRD Minister Smriti Irani and Ministers of state for Parliamentary Affairs
Prakash Javadekar and Santosh Gangwar are special invitees to the Committee.
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Sunday, October 26, 2014
The Rs 2,66,000 crore NREGA boondoggle; for every Rs 5 spent, the poor get Re 1 - NEWS
It is not surprising that any talk of revamping the Mahatma
Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA for short) brings forth a
deluge of protest from jholawala economists and vested interests. The Left
loves government spends in the name of the poor, regardless of corruption and
unmindful of actual results.
The Modi
government’s proposal to change the spending mix on NREGA from 60:40 (for
material and wages) to 51:49 and to focus the scheme on the 200 poorest
districts (or 2,500 blocks) has brought forth a open letter from 28 “leading” economists to abandon the effort. “Despite
numerous hurdles, the NREGA has achieved significant results. At a relatively
small cost (currently 0.3 percent of India's GDP), about 50 million households
are getting some employment at NREGA worksites every year. A majority of NREGA
workers are women, and close to half are Dalits or Adivasis. A large body of
research shows that the NREGA has wide-ranging social benefits, including the
creation of productive assets.”
This is, of course,
largely bunkum. Nobody needs to deny that some good must have come from spending a massive Rs 2,66,000 crore on NREGA over the last eight years, but even
better results could have been achieved by abandoning the charade of providing
employment at such huge cost and showering this kind of money from a helicopter
in poor areas.
In
fact, the evidence is to the contrary: the money is largely going down the
drain.
As economists
Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya note in a critique of the scheme in The Times of India, NREGA
(after taking corruption and leakages into account) essentially spends as much
as Rs 248 in order to deliver a net Rs 50 per person per day. In other words, the
scheme is highly inefficient even as a poverty alleviation scheme as it takes
nearly Rs 5 to deliver Re 1 worth of benefits to the poor. Would not the poor
have benefited more from direct cash transfers of a higher amount without
hassles and middlemen?
Quite clearly, NREGA
is going the same way as the food subsidy scheme, where too just 12 paise out
of every rupee spent reaches the right beneficiary .
To make matters
worse, state governments are now dragging their feet on implementing the
scheme, which promises one member of a household 100 days of employment every
year, failing which some kind of unemployment allowance is paid by the states.
A report in The Indian Express today (24 October) quotes from the
minutes of an internal review of the rural development ministry on the scheme
as saying that “states expressed their inability to continue the uninterrupted
implementation of MGNREG, given the situation of an overall fund shortage.”
It
is not as if the scheme, even now, is working to full potential. As against the
100 days of employment promised, it has seldom managed to provide even 50
mandays on an average per household per year. Mostly it has been in the
forties. This year, the figure is down to 31.4 mandays per household till
mid-October.
What
this suggests is that both demand (for work) and supply (by state governments)
is weak – raising questions about the viability and utility of the scheme. It is
quite possible that demand for NREGA work may not be as robust as presumed,
thanks to the general improvement in rural incomes with the steady and
increased fund flows to rural areas, which includes investments in
infrastructure and consistently rising minimum support prices (MSPs) for
foodgrain.
If NREGA had been a
big driver of rural incomes, it should have left its impact on food inflation
too, but a Reserve Bank of India study found that MSPs and rising rural wages
impacted food inflation more than NREGA wages. If the scheme had actually had
that big an impact on rural incomes, one would have thought it would have been
a major factor in boosting food prices since only the poorest of the poor opt
for work under NREGA. And the poor spend more of their incomes on food than the
non-poor.
It
is quite clear from all this that NREGA is a costly boondoggle which is not
achieving even its core objectives of providing enough work to the poor and
building durable assets that can increase productivity. If assets had been
built, they should have improved rural productivity and impacted food prices
downwards. And if only 31 mandays of work are being provided against the
mandated 100, it means either the work is not needed or not being provided.
There
are thus three possible remedies now.
First, the centre could
offer to transfer the funds allocated to NREGA in the budget as a direct grant
to states to spend it on any poverty alleviating scheme that works for them.
This would be in keeping with Modi’s federalist thinking.
Second, the funds can be
converted to direct income support to the poorest of the poor using the
Aadhaar-enabled inclusive banking scheme, the Jan Dhan Yojana. Not only will
the money go directly to the poor, but their bank accounts would also start
getting used.
Third, the best option
would be to use the money to build rural infrastructure and assets in the 200
poorest districts where poverty levels are high. This way the projects will
generate real jobs at real wages – and not just pointless work and corruption.
Any
which way you look at it, NREGA has been a disaster. The NDA has to rework it
to get better bang for the buck.
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Govt Employee Can’t Seek Promotion After Refusing It: SC
New Delhi: A government employee, whose promotion is canceled owing
to his refusal to accept it, cannot ask for it at a later stage, the Supreme Court has
said.
The apex court set aside the order of the Madhya Pradesh High
Court which had directed the state government
to restore the promotion of one of its employees whose promotion was cancelled
after he turned down the offer as he did not want to get transferred to some
other place.
“As we find that
it is the respondent himself who is responsible for cancellation of the
promotion order as he did not join the promoted post, the impugned order of the high court
is clearly erroneous and against the law,” a bench headed by Justice
J Chelameswar said.
The court passed
the order on an appeal filed by Madhya Pradesh government challenging the high
court order.
The government
had submitted that the high court failed to consider that Ramanand Pandey himself sent back the promotion order and
continued on his post and approached the court after two years when it
cancelled his promotion.
It said that at
the time of promotion, Pandey was posted in Bhind district where
he remained for almost 15 years and his intention was to stay at that place
only.
The apex court,
after hearing both sides, quashed the high court order.
“It is clear that
he wanted to remain in Bhind district, where he had continued since 1990, as he
was ready to go on leave instead of joining the place of transfer. Moreover,
for more than two years from the date of cancellation of the order of
promotion, the respondent kept totally mum and maintained stoic silence.
“There was not
even a semblance of protest as to why his promotion order was cancelled
or that he wanted to join the promotion post after the alleged inquiry into the
so-called complaint was over. He filed the writ petition on
October 24, 2008, i.e. almost two years after cancellation of his promotion
order,” it said.
PTI //copy//
HC Sets Aside Centre Order Dismissing Employee On Theft Charge
Mumbai: Terming as “harsh” the Centre’s
decision for dismissing a government employee from service for stealing government property,
the Bombay High Court has set aside the impugned order and
instead lowered the punishment to compulsory
retirement from service.
Justices
Naresh Patil and BP Colabawalla set aside the July 27, 2010, order of dismissal of
Ramchandra Goya Sadhu, who was caught stealing copper rods on May 14, 2010, by the Defense Security Corps
Platoon at Tiger Gate here. He was found to have tied the rods around his
waist, hiding them inside his clothes.
The court also set aside the March 15, 2013, order of the Central Administrative Tribunal which had upheld his dismissal from
service for committing theft of government property.
Instead, the bench ordered that the said employee be slapped with the penalty of compulsory retirement under Rule 40 of CCS (Pension) Rules, 1972, and paid pensionary benefits in accordance with law.
Sadhu had cited a government order wherein four employees who
were facing a similar charge of stealing property were not
dismissed but given a lesser punishment. Some of them were compulsorily retired from
service while others were not given increments for two years.
“Taking into consideration the period of service of the
petitioner and his unblemished record in serving his
employer, we are of the view that the punishment meted out… namely dismissal
from service, was harsh,” the bench noted in its order, which was delivered
recently.
“We find that the interest of justice would be met if the order
of dismissal of the petitioner is set aside and, instead, the lesser punishment
of compulsory retirement from service is imposed,” the bench said.
“We are not for a moment condoning the actions of the
petitioner. The charge of theft is indeed a serious one, but looking to the
totality of the facts, we feel that in the present case it
would be punishment enough if the petitioner is compulsorily retired from
service so that he receives pensionary benefits as per the rules,” the judges observed.
The bench said it had taken a sympathetic view in the case only
because the petitioner has an unblemished record of 22 years of service and
other similarly-placed employees found guilty on theft charges were slapped with penalties lighter
than what was meted out to him.
PTI //copy//Saturday, October 25, 2014
...........
Some leaders are advocating isolationism to the members of
the GDS union.
They are frustrated …..…………. confused …………. demoralized…. antagonized.....
Their methodology and concept is not clear and transparent ….......
One side demanding departmental
status to GDS and other side propagating they would not be affiliated to any
federation or becomes members of departmental unions.
This is except provocation to establish the deviation from the unity of GDS and departmental employees and postal working class as
well.
If it's so, why such conceptual leadership
filed case against the NFPE for GDS affiliation.
The ambiguous strategy of such leaders giving advantage to the anti-GDS forces this time also. Because of their mischievousness and immature behaviour the GDS are facing untold troubles and miserable conditions.
Dear GDS comrades, don’t caught by the fangs of such leadership…..
By losing all the abilities and
to suppress their incapability creating
much noise to divert the attention of the structural and strategic methodology of NFPE.
This is the time for a decision and determination.
LET US MARCH FORWARD WITH NFPE
AND CONFEDERATION
Modi and labour reforms: Will be able to satisfy both the industries and unions? - - NEWS
When prime minister Narendra Modi unveiled
some steps towards labour reforms, he was responding to long pending demands
from business houses and international institutions such as the World Bank; but
the critical question is if he has found the fine balance between the needs of
the industry and labour.
A highlight of his
announcement was the reform of the “inspection raj” in which labour inspectors
visited industries according to their will. According to the new arrangement,
the process will be automated, which will prevent inspectors from selecting the
units to be inspected locally, while inspection reports have to be
uploaded within 72 hours.
According to Modi, the
old system harassed businesses while the new one will bring in transparency and
ease in dealing with the government.
Another point is the
announcement of an universal account number for labourers which will allow easy
transfer of their Provident Fund accounts. Apparently, about Rs 27, 000 crore
is lying idle because of the earlier immovability. "I need to return this money
to the poor," Modi said, adding that it was a part of his vision. The
reforms will also make paperwork easy - instead of 50 forms, companies will now
need to fill only one form, that too online.
At first sight, Modi
seems have combined the demands of the industry and welfare of the labourers,
but going by the contradictory reactions from both, he certainly has a long way
to go.
While ASSOCHAM
complimented the "government for initiating the labour law reforms as it
will create a conducive environment for growth of Trade and Industry and bring
transparency in social security benefits to help workers,” Tapan Sen, General
Secretary CITU and Rajya Sabha member said: “it’s only cheating of
workers, as while the Government is launching these schemes, simultaneously it
is changing the labour laws to push out the labour from their purview”.
Similarly, both FICCI and
CII welcomed the measures, while Gurudas Gupta, General Secretary, AITUC, said:
“the PM is going in for drastic changes which will ultimately benefit the employees
to carry out a hire-and-fire policy and harm working people.
This is being done
to give a free hand to the Corporates. This will depress wage levels and shall
create a situation for low paid apprentices in place of permanent labour and
even contract workers”.
Whether it’s the Modi
government or the previous UPA government, labour reforms have mostly been seen
as reforms of the labour laws, which the country and states (labour being a
concurrent subject) have in plenty. In fact, the UPA had initiated amending
many of the labour laws, with a view to helping Indian industries to compete in
the global market. In 2005, a tripartite discussion under the then common
minimum programme had agreed that “the management would require operational
flexibility which includes power to right-size the work force”
The myriad labour laws
and the extremely disempowered conditions of labour, a majority of which is in
the unorganised sector, makes labour reforms a very complicated endeavour. For
instance, writing for
the BBC Economist Kaushik
Basu, highlights the case of the Industrial Disputes Act (IDA), 1947,
which he says “is a good example of a well-meaning policy that is founded on
antiquated economics and a handsome misunderstanding of the way markets function.”
“In fact an amendment
made to the IDA in the mid-1980s requires that any firm employing more than 100
workers needs to get permission from the State Government before retrenching
workers (and in practice that permission is seldom given), he adds.
His point is that IDA
makes firing of workers very hard, which limits the flexibility of free
contracting.
From the perspective of
industries, and even from the point of view of the prospects of short term
contracts for manufacture that companies undertake which require short term
workers, it may be true; but from the point of view of labourers, it affects
their welfare and security. There may be certainly some justification on
tweaking laws to make more trained labour easily available to the industries,
without considerable legal hassles, but then the labour also has a right to
feel secure. It may also be true that because of the rigidity of some of our
laws, companies are unable to expand and innovate. Experts such as Basu point
out that labour data from the 1980s show that companies employing more than 100
people have gone down because of the labour laws.
While the labour unions
fear a free hire and fire policy, what reformists want is the ability to write
different types of contracts - some short term, some long term and an easy
regime from the government in terms of controls and supervision.
Will Modi be
able to convince both the businesses and the labour that he stands for growth
as well as welfare?
A planning
commission working group
document that contributed to the 11th Plan
(during the UPA) is worth a revisit in the present context, it said: “The UPA
rejects the idea of automatic hire and fire. It recognizes that some changes in
labour laws may be required but such changes must fully protect the interests
of workers and families and must take place after full consultation with trade
unions. The UPA will pursue a dialogue with industry and Trade Unions on this
issue before coming up with specific proposals. However, labour laws other than
the Industrial Disputes Act that creates an Inspector Raj will be re- examined
and procedures harmonised and streamlined.
The UPA government firmly believes
that labour-management relations in our country must be marked by
consultations, cooperation and consensus, not confrontation.
Tripartite
consultations with Trade Unions and Industry on all proposals concerning them
will be actively pursued. Rights and benefits earned by workers, including the
right to strike according to law, will not be taken away or curtailed.”
This sounds reasonable
and sound in principle. Perhaps, this is the line that the Modi government
should also pursue while pushing for reforms.
//copy// PTI
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
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