The recently released quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data broadly confirms the dip in employment and jobs during the countrywide lockdown period, followed by a certain degree of recovery in the post-lockdown months last year as have been indicated by various survey-based studies and research papers. The quarterly bulletin on PLFS provides data on key employment and unemployment indicators i.e. Unemployment Rate (UR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and Labour...

-The Hindu Entire Opposition was united in their call to send the Bill to a select committee The contentious General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Amendment Bill, 2021 was passed amidst shocking scenes in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday despite the Opposition’s demand to send the legislation to a select committee. The Rajya Sabha passed the Bill that would allow the government to cut its share in public sector insurance companies, paving the way for...

-The Hindu It could be a long wait before employers and workers enjoy the so-called benefits extended by the labour codes The National Democratic Alliance government enacted the Code on Wages in August 2019 and the other three Codes, viz., the Industrial Relations Code, the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code and Code on Social Security (CSS) in September 2020. Later, it had framed the draft rules albeit incompletely under all...

-The Hindu Supreme Court modifies February 2020 judgment; imposes fines on major political parties, including the BJP and the Congress. The Supreme Court on Tuesday warned parliament that the nation is losing patience with the advent of criminals in politics even as it imposed fines on major political parties, including the BJP and Congress, for covering up from voters the criminal past of the candidates they had fielded in the Bihar Assembly...

-TheWire.in We must change the parameters we use to judge the "productivity" of parliament. My first few days in the Rajya Sabha were tumultuous enough to realise that classics like Erskine May’s parliamentary Practice, the bible of Westminster, would really have to be ‘tropicalised’ a lot to adjust to the gross realities of the world’s largest and beleaguered democracy. The small endoscopic view of parliament’s functioning also leads to the belief that...