Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) completes five years since its launch tomorrow. In order to commemorate the completion of the fifth year of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Ministry Of Rural Development is organizing Mahatma Gandhi NREGA Sammelan on Wednesday, the 2nd February ,2011 . Five years ago on the same day, the scheme was launched from Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh with the objective...

The rapid growth of global markets has not seen the parallel development of social and economic institutions to ensure balanced, inclusive and sustainable growth. Although we may not have yet reached “the end of history,” globalisation has brought us closer to “the end of geography” as we have known it. The compression of time and space triggered by the Third Industrial Revolution —roughly, since 1980 — has changed our interactions with...

The only economic or social variable that has not moved since 1991 in India is our 93% informal employment in the informal sector. So, while we have smartly and substantially moved the needle on everything from foreign exchange reserves, infant mortality, school enrolment, market capitalisation, foreign investment, and pregnancy deaths, 9 out of 10 of our workers do not work in organised employment. Informal employment—what President Alan Garcia of Peru...

Rolling out a slew of measures for the working class in 2010, the government effected key reforms in some labour acts while also raising the annual rate of returns on employee provident funds to 9.5 per cent. The steps came as the government also unveiled the draft national policy on employment with suggestions of launching of a employment guarantee scheme in urban areas on the lines of NREGA. It amended the Payment...

Labour Minister Harish Rawat says the government is confident of creating 58 million additional jobs by the end of the 11th Five Year Plan in 2012 thanks to the smart recovery in the farm sector and its resultant impact on the rural economy. "Agriculture has responded very positively. With economy poised to grow at nine percent in this fiscal year, we will be able to meet the target," Rawat told...