-Livemint.com * In Kerala, the online economy taps into a labour pool willing to take up transient jobs due to lack of better options * The gig industry is defined as a labour market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs ERNAKULAM: The city was fast falling asleep. In home after home, BRIght porch lights were being turned off behind closed gates. Down an empty...

-The Hindu Business Line Sociologist Dipankar Gupta discusses the dynamics of political mobilisation and the politics of reservation. Excerpts from an interview to Poornima Joshi: * The Indian state’s failure to provide the basics — universal education and healthcare — has never become the rallying point for political mobilisation. Why is that? The more cleavages of class, caste, language, race a society has, the more difficult it is to practise democracy. Democracy works...

-ThePrint.in French economist defends Congress' minimum income guarantee scheme, says India's poor have been 'badly treated by the country's elite'. New Delhi: French economist Thomas Piketty has defended the Congress party’s poll promise of minimum income guarantee (MIG), saying that India’s poor have been “badly treated by the country’s elite”. “It is high time to move from the politics of caste conflict to the politics of income and wealth distribution,” Piketty said in...

-TheWire.in The proposed Social Security Code, which BRIngs together fifteen labour laws, is an opportunity to think afresh about the challenge of supporting new mothers – even in the informal economy. Maternity entitlements in the form of wage compensation during pregnancy and after delivery is an internationally accepted right for all women workers. It is also recognised as a supportive mechanism for exclusive breastfeeding, critical for child nutrition and well-being. The legislative...

-Newsclick.in Income support should not lead to the State washing its hands of the poor after handing them a certain sum of money whose real value too would dwindle over time. With Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s announcement recently at Raipur that his party had taken a “historic decision” to introduce an income guarantee scheme for the poor, and with the general anticipation that the Narendra Modi government’s last budget will also announce...