The people who uncovered the fact liken it to "encountering a mass grave of people who do not matter" in India's seat of power: At least 10 homeless people are dying on the streets of Delhi every day, the rate peaking as the summer rolls on. After a six-month examination of official records at crematoria, police stations and graveyards across India's richest city, Smita Jacob and Asghar Sharif, analysts with an...

Various ways and means of checking irregularities in the implementation of rural employment guarantee scheme have been discussed. One suggestion is that workers employed under this scheme ought to be organised. The first step in this direction was the formation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Workers' Union - Gujarat (NREGWUG), which was followed by other similar efforts in Rajasthan, parts of Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere. Paulomee Mistry , general secretary...

Population growth seems to have dropped off the public agenda these days. One reason for this is a twist in the old Malthusian argument that sees the rising proportion of persons of working age as a positive for growth. This shift in the age-distribution, it is argued, will stimulate savings as pressure on household and public budgets for the needs of dependent children comes down. Young workers are assumed to...

There may be succour in store for the exploited lot of `domestic workers' with a key government panel recommending that `placement agencies', which work as mediators in employment of helps, should be regulated. It has also decided that government should ask states to declare minimum wages for these workers. The panel said that the Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1953, should regulate placement agencies. If this is implemented, the agencies...

The global platform for action on gender equality and women’s empowerment was fixed in Beijing 15 years ago and international organizations like the ILO, women activists and researchers, policymakers, etc all over the world have advocated for gender equality in the world of work for even longer. Although women constitute almost 41 per cent of the global labour force, yet the productive potential of women workers still remains grossly undermined....