The two day 43rd Session of the Indian Labour Conference (ILC), the apex national tripartite body that discusses key issues affecting labour and employment and provides policy perspectives and recommendations, concluded in New Delhi today. The Conference was inaugurated by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Tuesday 23rd November 2010. Senior level representatives of the three pillars of the tripartism, Trade Unions, Employers’ Associations and Government, participated in the deliberations...

The recently published survey of employment and unemployment in India, conducted in 300 districts across the country, shows once again that without a reform of India’s archaic labour laws, the share of salaried employed will continue to remain low. The employment-unemployment survey was conducted by the Labour Bureau of the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment. Public attention has largely focused on the unemployment number that the survey threw up....

The mass migration of farmers moving to urban India is becoming a worrisome trend, said planners at a seminar in the Indian Capital. “Many peasants want to leave agriculture, sell land and migrate to cities,” Arvind Mayaram, Additional Secretary and financial advisor to the Ministry of Rural Development told the India Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum on Monday. Seventy per cent of India’s 1.1 billion people currently live in villages,...

The unemployment rate in India is estimated at 9.4 percent or 94 persons out of 1000 persons in the labour force for the fixed reference period of financial year 2009-10, according to employment-unemployment survey by the Labour Bureau under the Labour and Employment Ministry. In absolute terms about 40 million persons are found unemployed based on the survey results at overall level of the State/UT’s surveyed. The unemployment rates are estimated at...

In most countries, unemployment is a clean-cut, easily understandable — and identifiable — problem. In India, it’s not that simple. The complexity of our economy, the barbed-wire fence of restrictions that surround our “organised” sector, the tendency towards seasonal work, and the networks of caste, clan and kinship that still govern employment in many parts make answering the simple question “How many of India’s workers are unemployed?” very difficult indeed. The labour ministry...