-The Hindu With labour law reforms set to change industrial relations, trade union responses must include social dialogue too Ten central trade unions (CTUs) have called for a nation-wide strike on November 26, 2020 to condemn what they consider to be the anti-people, and anti-labour economic policies of the government. This follows strikes in the coal and defence sectors protesting privatisation and the corporatisation policies of the government. It is essential to...

-National Herald The numbers show that it has come to the rescue of India’s rural workforce as the country battles one of its worst phases of economic slowdown and unemployment Over 9 crore persons living in rural parts of the country found informal work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 2020 till October, a Right to Information (RTI) reply seen by NH has revealed. The rural workers...

-The Hindu The current crisis has provided us with an opportunity to rethink our health, economic and climate policies In the new set of relief measures announced by the Finance Minister, job creation has moved to the forefront. This shows that the government has finally accepted that the unemployment rates are very high, a fact it has so far been suppressing or dismissing. This is a welcome change given its usual ostrich-like...

-The Hindu It can be made workable if there is political will and fiscal resources As economies around the world struggle to recover from the double whammy of a pandemic and a lockdown, unemployment is soaring. In India, the land of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the promise of jobs and the politics of unemployment have a long history. Can a citizen demand work as a right, and...

-The Hindu Several myths persist about job creation, which can misguide policymaking Jobs are rarely far from the minds of citizenry. Politicians woke up to this fact in the run-up to the Bihar Assembly elections. It is for the first time that unemployment has become a big issue in an election. This is not surprising. Rising unemployment The economy had been slowing for nine quarters prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Before the 2019 Lok...