-Down to Earth Biometric-based unique identity or Aadhaar is leading to huge problems for people working for the rural employment guarantee scheme and for others receiving welfare benefits. Not only have enrolments been done shoddily but the experience of the pilot projects shows that it is almost impossible to authenticate the work-hardened fingerprints of the poor, find Latha Jishnu and Jyotika Sood. Besides, there is the overwhelming issue of deficient online...

-The Deccan Chronicle It appears that temperamental West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is rushing to the Centre with her set of demands without checking facts. Ms Banerjee, who has been putting pressure on the Centre to bail out her debt-ridden state, had earlier shot off letters to the Planning Commission and the ministry of rural development asking why people in West Bengal had to work more to earn a day’s...

The exploitation of migrant construction workers has grown alongside the expansion of the industry. It's time the government got serious about upholding the law. A recent report in The Hindu on the violation of labour laws at a massive construction site belonging to the Army Welfare Housing Organisation in Bangalore raises yet again the repeated neglect of regulations relating to the employment and welfare of workers by construction companies in India. For...

Raising the bar on child labour, the government is set to debar employment of children below the age of 14 in any industry. Only those between 14 to 18 years can be employed except in hazardous industries. The existing Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, allows employment of children of up to 14 years of age in the industries not considered to be hazardous. Hazardous industries include tobacco, stone crushing,...

-The Business Standard The Ministry of Rural Development has rejected the demand of a parliamentary standing committee to include the works of artisans, weavers and leather workers in the list of permissible works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The Central Employment Guarantee Council, constituted under the legislation establishing the rural jobs scheme to oversee it, had earlier turned down this recommendation of the standing committee on urban and...