The 11th five-year plan promised the nation “inclusive growth”. It marked a departure from the earlier official position that the “benefits of growth” would automatically “trickle down” to the poor, and that if growth was not actually benefiting the poor, then the reason lay in its not being high enough. The 11th plan, by contrast, conceded that the “benefits of growth” did not automatically “trickle down”, but argued that growth...

Those who see a direct link between wage inflation and the employment guarantee scheme need to think again Rural wage rates have been rising at quite a fast rate in recent months. Farmers have been complaining about their inability to get cheap labour for their farms. Industry, too, has raised the alarm saying that this is squeezing their margins; higher rural wages mean fewer people are willing to work on construction...

-Live Mint Recent reports of the employment and unemployment surveys of National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) have confirmed the fear of jobless growth during 2004-2010. This data has led to much debate, but the overwhelming consensus remains that the recent period of high gross domestic product (GDP) growth has not benefited the majority of workers. Although the debate is yet to settle, there have been arguments for looking at the data closely....

Two senior ministers are at loggerheads over filing of an appeal against a court order that compels the Centre to pay minimum wages to the MGNREGA workers. Apart from re-igniting the debate over statutory minimum wages and centrally decided price, the order forces the central government to pay about Rs 4,000 crore to workers under the rural job plan as arrears and R1,000 crore every year. According to sources, in a...

We have five million children in the labour market, say official figures. Their actual numbers may be four times as many. As a nation, we have failed each one of them…   Millions of our children still labour today, in factories, farms, kilns, mines, homes and city waste dumps, when they should be in school or in a playground. We profoundly fail these children, collectively depriving them of education, play, rest, healthy...