Kerala has a long history of foodgrains deficit, especially in rice. For instance, deficit in rice has increased steadily in the State from 45 per cent to 85 per cent between 1957 and 2008. However, not enough attention has been paid to mitigate the food insecurity problem in the State in the context where there has been a large scale decline in the area and production of paddy. This paper...

Bagisa Shramik Santha and Asom Majuri Shramik Union, two registered unions of the state, have demanded that the tea industry should hike the daily wages of labourers on a par with wages given to workers under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) schemes. The unions have over one lakh members across the state. The Asom Majuri Shramik Union has its headquarters in Silchar while the Bagisa Shramik Santha has it headquarters...

The International Labour Organisation has done well to include a draft convention on decent work for domestic workers in the agenda for the 100th session of the International Labour Conference, scheduled for June. For centuries the domestic workers have lived along the margins of the international workforce. Well-documented reports by the ILO and other organisations point to the universality of their woes. Entirely informal in nature, domestic work, at its...

Training its guns on the state government over the mismanagement of schemes that are being run to provide employment to the poor, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday alleged that officials were siphoning of crores of rupees which should have been be distributed to the poor as remuneration in the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS). “There is a multi-crore scam in the EGS scheme. There needs to be CID inquiry to...

Trade unions of all hues join forces in an unprecedented manner and present a charter of demands to the government. IN a rare show of unity, and for the first time since Independence, around one lakh workers affiliated to eight central trade unions and national industrial federations, including the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) and the trade unions of the Left parties, came out on the streets of New...