-The Indian Express Government’s response to migrants’ plight, economic crisis, has been to unilaterally bring changes in labour laws. But industrial prosperity cannot be built on a race to the bottom for workers. Only weeks ago, India, and the entire world, witnessed the spectacle of the country’s employment precarity pour out on its roads and highways — men, women and children, in distress of having lost jobs, income and shelter, with no...
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Briefing Note for Parliamentarians on Labour Law Reforms
-Press release by Working Peoples' Charter dated 21st September, 2020 Amidst the micro and macro-economic crisis of the last 5 years, the union government has aggressively pushed the agenda of labour law reforms -- purportedly to simplify India’s ‘complex’ labour legislations, improve the business environment, and augment growth and employment. These changes, driven primarily by the business fraternity, have been aimed at improving India’s ranking in the ‘Ease of Doing Business’...
More »Less than 34,000 inter-State migrant workers in 2019-20, says government -Priscilla Jebaraj
-The Hindu No workers were registered in Delhi, Patna; No data on Shramik Special deaths, says responses to RTI requests. In the last five years, there have been no inter-State migrant workers registered in the Delhi, Dehradun or Patna regions. Nationwide, there were less than 34,000 workers registered in 2019-20 under the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (ISMW) Act, 1979, according to a response to a recent Right to Information Act request. In response to...
More »Over three-fourth of workers lost their livelihoods since lockdown, finds ActionAid India's national survey of informal labourers
ActionAid Association's (AAA) national level survey among people dependent on the informal economy during the third phase of the national lockdown towards the end of May 2020 (i.e. between May 14th and May 22nd, 2020) has documented the "nature and extent of the transitions in the lives and livelihoods of informal workers, including migrant workers, during the pandemic and provide[s] an insight into the precarity they experience and the coping...
More »Policymakers still talk of ‘food security’, it’s time to plan for ‘nutritional self-reliance’ -Ajay Vir Jakhar
-The Indian Express Farmers will need to be supported in perpetuity; they can never become atmanirbhar. The question is how best to support farmers such that India may become nutrition self-reliant Imagine, while constructing a multi-storey building the contractors discover the building foundation has begun to sink. It is scary, but wait. Now, imagine that even though the contractors know this, they simply decide to continue work rather than alter the plans....
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