-The Hindu Business Line   Cases of prosecutions over wages, contract workers, child labour are down  Among key initiatives of the Narendra Modi government has been the fast-tracking of labour law reforms to put an end to ‘inspector raj' and improving the country's rank in the World Bank's ease of ‘doing business' index. However, when it comes to checking labour law violations, the number of inspections in the Central sphere, which includes banks, railways,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Bengal appears to have emerged as one of the best performers in implementing the rural job scheme, rising to fourth on the list from being one of the laggards even two years back. According to figures with the rural development ministry, the state has generated over 11.3 crore persondays of work since April, next only to table-topper Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. Till 2012, it was among the...

-NDTV Ranchi: Launched in 2005 by the UPA government, the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act was intended to help the poor by promising 100 days of work a year to rural households at a pre-determined minimum wage rate. In the last decade, there has been mixed opinion on the success of the initiative. But in the last few months, the central government has said it has plans to modify...

-The Indian Express Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly promised India "maximum governance". But to get there, the high costs and ineffectiveness of frontline service providers need to be addressed. Take elementary school teachers, for instance. "Complete rest in comfortable conditions" is the description a rather candid elementary education cluster resource centre coordinator (CRCC) in Bihar gave his own job. And it's not just him, it is also how the CRCC describes...

-The Times of India Over two crore households have been denied work under the fund-starved rural job guarantee scheme in the past eight months. This is a direct result of the deep cuts in funding of the scheme and various other changes initiated by the Modi government. With the employment situation still dire and the new government's long-term efforts to catalyze industrial growth still on the drawing board, the failure of...