The effect of labour-oriented schemes like MGNREGS and health insurance cover for 300 million people are yet to be captured, says U.N's labour organisation's report India has performed poorly in providing social security protection to its people until recently with “very high vulnerability” to poverty and informal labour practices in the world, according to the International Labour Organisation. In its first comprehensive ‘World Social Security Report’, which was released yesterday, the ILO...

The mass migration of farmers moving to urban India is becoming a worrisome trend, said planners at a seminar in the Indian Capital. “Many peasants want to leave agriculture, sell land and migrate to cities,” Arvind Mayaram, Additional Secretary and financial advisor to the Ministry of Rural Development told the India Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum on Monday. Seventy per cent of India’s 1.1 billion people currently live in villages,...

Some people feel agriculture in India provides employment much beyond its capacity — that is, the number of people working on the farm is many times the actual requirement. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is among the proponents of this view. In his interaction with a group of editors last month, Singh said, “The only way we can raise our heads above poverty is for more people to be taken out of...

The UNEMPLOYMENT rate in India is estimated at 9.4 percent or 94 persons out of 1000 persons in the labour force for the fixed reference period of financial year 2009-10, according to employment-UNEMPLOYMENT survey by the Labour Bureau under the Labour and Employment Ministry. In absolute terms about 40 million persons are found unemployed based on the survey results at overall level of the State/UT’s surveyed. The UNEMPLOYMENT rates are estimated at...

For Sonia Gandhi, the change could not have been more dramatic. Just last year, her contribution in pushing for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was hailed as the single largest reason for the fresh mandate received by a government avowedly dedicated to the aam aadmi. Yet, last week, Gandhi, as chairperson of the National Advisory Council (NAC) was reduced to lodging a complaint with Prime Minister...