The government's flagship programme MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Emolyment Guarantee Act) has created a source of additional income for families living below the poverty line in tribal areas of Rajasthan but has failed to check distress migration as minimum 100 days of employment assured under the Act is not provided to all workers. Many villagers in Dungarpur, Udaipur and Rajsamand districts claim that the scheme is mostly attracting women and...

When we talk of India's mammoth work force, be it in rural or urban scenarios, what comes to mind is the 'unorganised' sector. They form the multitudes that do not 'belong' to a sector governed by a slew of measures in accordance with labour laws or employment terms defined by policy measures. These are the multitudes, which fall outside the ambit of Central Government legislation pertaining to wages and salaries....

A direct outcome of the global economic crisis has been a decline in the rate of growth of wages across the world, barring Asia and Latin America. A study by the International Labour Organisation, Global Wage Report 2010-11: Wage policies in times of crisis, highlights this reality and points to the need for countries to put in place proper social and labour market policies to protect an increasingly vulnerable workforce....

No matter how tired we are in the course of a difficult day’s work, there is always the reassuring feeling that at the end of the hard work we’ll go back to sleep in the comfort of our home. But there are millions of people in our cities who simply do not have a home. The homeless of our cities suffer the most; yet they are the most neglected. No...

In a bid to encourage farmers to part with their land for industrial development, the Gujarat government has formulated a new land acquisition policy to make them partners in the development. Announcing this, Minister of State for Industries Saurabh Patel said the State-owned Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) henceforth would acquire land only with the “consent” of the concerned farmers, pay them at the prevailing market price, and give them a...