The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council has asked the government to ensure that over one crore workers enrolled under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) should get wages as per minimum wages applicable in different states. As of now, those enrolled in the world’s biggest job guarantee scheme in 19 states get wages less than what has been prescribed under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. In some states,...

With an eye on projected 2.5 per cent annual growth in the job sector, the government is in the process of giving final touches to a national policy to accelerate employment growth. The draft of the proposed National Employment Policy is likely to be placed before the Cabinet soon for its approval. In a statement, the Labour and Employment Ministry said the draft note has already been prepared. It was...

Expressing 'deep distress' over the 'shameful practice of manual scavenging' in the country, the National Advisory Council, headed by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, Saturday asked the government to 'fully abolish' it by the end of 2012. It observed that despite the practice of employing scavengers being declared an offence, no one has been punished for it. The issue is seen as 'an issue of sanitation than of issue of human dignity,'...

The Union government is reneging on its legal obligation to pay minimum wages, even to the most deprived sections of the population, in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. If anyone wants to study the capacity of India's policymakers to turn a progressive piece of legislation upside down, the wage policy under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is a good place to...

Claims about the benefits of Posco's $12 billion integrated steel project to Orissa's economy and job market come from a study by an “independent” research organisation — but was paid for by Posco itself. In January 2007, the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) published a report on ‘Social Cost Benefit Analysis of the POSCO Steel Project in Orissa,' which claimed that the project would directly and indirectly generate 8.7...