-The Times of India Dalits have once again lost out, this time on wages in rural areas. A first-of-its-kind data released by the Reserve Bank of India(RBI) has revealed that during the last eight years - between April, 2004 and March, 2012 - the daily wages of cobblers in rural areas rose by 95%, the worst show among the 17 categories listed by the government's Labour Bureau. The all-India data compiled...

-The Telegraph Burdwan: A 65-year-old labourer was allegedly beaten to death by a group of farmers in Burdwan when a meeting to discuss the workers’ demand for a revision of daily wages escalated into a clash. Radhanath Soren, who is also a CPM worker, was taken to Jamalpur health centre where he was pronounced dead. Over 100 farm labourers in Nabagram have for the past three days refused to cultivate the fields at...

The Government of India has formally launched the news Guidelines of the MGNAREGA based on the Mihir Shah Committee report. The news guidelines include many new works under conservation activities and it strengthens the hands of the village panchayats and gram sabhas. However, the list of works does not include the activities under the system of rice intensification (SRI) which encourages scientific method of paddy cultivation with better yield in...

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...

They prefer to migrate to cities to earn a livelihood ‘Apply for work, get work, and get paid on time.' This is how the Union government's scheme promising 100 days of guaranteed work in a financial year to a rural household took off in 2006. However, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) has failed to come as a relief for people especially those in drought-hit regions of the...