-Press release by Working Peoples' Charter dated 21st September, 2020 Amidst the micro and macro-economic crisis of the last 5 years, the union government has aggressively pushed the agenda of labour law reforms -- purportedly to simplify India’s ‘complex’ labour legislations, improve the business environment, and augment growth and employment. These changes, driven primarily by the business fraternity, have been aimed at improving India’s ranking in the ‘Ease of Doing Business’...

-The Telegraph The economic distress caused by unilaterally imposed lockdowns has brought the focus back on the rural job programme Narendra Modi’s cocky statement in Parliament in 2015 about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act being a monumental failure of the Congress regime may have been a political jibe, but it showed that the government had no intention of boosting a programme which, since its inception, has suffered from the...

-PTI/ The Hindu Business Line Time for bureaucracy to take meaningful action, says former RBI governor Terming the 23.9 per cent fall in economic growth in June quarter alarming, former Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan has said bureaucracy should come out of complacency and take meaningful action. The current crisis requires a more thoughtful and active government, he said, adding unfortunately, after an initial burst of activity, it seems to have retreated...

-The Hindu Well-thought-out policies can reverse the results of incompetence; the onus is on the Centre to spend now Now it is official: India has managed to become the global leader in the number of new daily cases of COVID-19 and the worst performing of all major economies during the pandemic so far. How did we manage this double feat? Not through ‘acts of god’, but because of the incompetence and apathy...

-WorkingPeoplesCharter.in Working People's Charter- a national alliance of Informal Sector workers (WPC) presents a preliminary survey titled “After the long marches: What do workers want?” surveying migrant workers – who returned home from big cities due to the lockdown - across some of the major states in India. This survey examines whether there have been changes in the decision of migrant workers to return to cities in order to find work....