Sonia Gandhi has written to the Prime Minister requesting him to find a way so that workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act are paid the minimum wages across the country. In a letter dated November 11, Sonia wrote: “Since the matter is of an urgent and inter-ministerial nature, you may wish to have it examined and give suitable directions.” The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia, had in...

Labour Bureau has been conducting quick quarterly employment surveys in the selected sectors of the economy at the enterprise level to assess the impact of economic slowdown on employment in India. With a view to study the overall employment-unemployment situation in the country, Labour Bureau has now conducted its first national level household survey in 28 States/UT Except five North Eastern States and the Islands of Lakshadweep and the Andaman...

The first-ever annual employment survey by the Labour Bureau under the Union Ministry of Labour points to a “jobless economic growth” last fiscal year. During the bureau’s survey period 2009-10 — also the year in which India’s gross domestic product grew by 7.4 per cent — unemployment was 9.4 per cent. The National Sample Survey Organisation, using its Consumer Expenditure Survey for 2007-08, had painted a rosy unemployment figure of 2.8...

The unEmployment Rate in the labour force was estimated to be 9.4 per cent during the 2009-10 financial year, a government survey has said. The Indian jobless rate was till now arrived at strictly by guesswork. According to the first national level household survey conducted by the Labour Bureau, out of 1,000 employed persons, 455 were employed in agriculture, forestry and fisheries group during this period. The survey was conducted with a view...

In most countries, unemployment is a clean-cut, easily understandable — and identifiable — problem. In India, it’s not that simple. The complexity of our economy, the barbed-wire fence of restrictions that surround our “organised” sector, the tendency towards seasonal work, and the networks of caste, clan and kinship that still govern employment in many parts make answering the simple question “How many of India’s workers are unemployed?” very difficult indeed. The labour ministry...