-Press release by NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, dated 19 May, 2018 Yesterday’s much awaited Supreme Court judgement in the Swaraj Abhiyan PIL has let down millions of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) workers - the most marginalised citizens of India who need employment and social security.  The Court has ignored the wealth of evidence against the brazen violations of the legal entitlements of NREGA workers and has allowed the Central Government...

-PTI Thiruvananthapuram: The CPI(M)-led LDF government in Kerala is all set to implement its new labour policy with the state cabinet according sanction for it today. A cabinet meeting, chaired by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, gave the nod to the Kerala State Labour Policy, which envisages making the state more employee-friendly and ensuring social security and decent wages to all workers. According to an official release, the new policy advocates stringent action against...

-The Indian Express The problem is under-employment. It won’t be resolved if the residually-employed are notionally shifted from the informal to formal sector. In an article in January, Soumya Kanti Ghosh and Pulak Ghosh (Ghosh and Ghosh) claimed that seven million new jobs have been created in the formal sector. Their claim is based on the increase in registration under the Employees Provident Fund (EPFO), National Pension Scheme and Employees State Insurance...

-Financial Express Among the six states studied by Icrier, Gujarat spends the most on agriculture R&E (0.59%), followed by Bihar (0.50%), Punjab (0.41%), Odisha (0.25%), Uttar Pradesh (0.17%) and Madhya Pradesh (0.24%). The government’s expenditure on agricultural research and extension education services is not only very low but also heavily skewed in favour of crops, even as the dairy sector has a rapidly increasing share in the gross value of output...

-The Hindu ‘Information Commissioners are not being appointed’ Hyderabad: Releasing her RTI Story Power to The People in the city, activist Aruna Roy, who led the movement for getting the legislation in place, said citizens were moving towards a more challenging and non-transparent environment. “This government has consolidated opaqueness. It has systematically weakened the RTI Act by granting exemptions to CBI and other agencies on security grounds. Electoral bonds are a case in...