-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The Narendra Modi government is all set to give a digital boost to the flagship rural jobs programme by providing tablets to 2.65 lakh gram panchayats in the country to monitor its implementation. The mobile monitoring of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) will cost the Centre about Rs 265 crore, with the rural development ministry distributing tablets costing Rs 10,000 each to...

-The Hindu Six studies in four continents also reveal that small loans had no impact on women's empowerment Six studies in four continents, including one in India, have shown no evidence of microcredit successfully alleviating poverty, researchers said on Friday. Microcredit also had no impact on women's empowerment, the findings showed, upturning one of the articles of faith of development policy, including in India. Conducted by researchers affiliated to Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)...

-Business Standard Working on clubbing all the 44 labour laws into five segments The Centre might take up changes to the Industrial Disputes Act on the lines of what the Rajasthan government recently did, sources said. The Union ministry has started work on clubbing all the 44 labour laws into five segments - industrial relations, wages, social security, working conditions and welfare cess. Sources told Business Standard the views of stakeholders had been taken...

-Livemint.com Real wages have grown at an average 1% annually between 1983 and 2013 Industrial workers on the shop floor have got a raw deal through the economic boom of the past three decades. Their real wages have grown far less than the growth in productivity. That flies in the face of the traditional economic assumption that the two move in tandem. The share of wages in the net value added by...

-The United Nations An extra 10 million people worldwide are likely to be unemployed by 2019, a new United Nations report has said today, pointing to slower growth, widening inequalities and economic turbulence as reasons behind the trend. According to the World Employment and Social Outlook - Trends 2015 (WESO) report, released today by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the next four years will see the total number of people out of...