-The Hindu It allows employers to extend unlimited advances to workers and charge an unspecified interest rate on such loans Debt bondage is a form of slavery that exists when a worker is induced to accept advances on wages, of a size, or at a level of interest, such that the advance will never be repaid. One of India’s hastily-passed Labour Codes — the Code on Wages, 2019 — gives legal sanction...

-The Hindu Business Line While data from CMIE and EPFO present a contrasting picture, jobs in the unorganised sector continue to be difficult to assess Employment data in India have always been controversial as the concept per se is quite nebulous. While corporate data on employment is foolproof as the headcount is known and revealed in annual reports, the same cannot be said about the non-corporate sector. Often, data on employment exchanges...

-Newsclick.in After facing severe setbacks due to demonetisation, hasty implementation of GST, and the ill-conceived COVID-19 lockdown, the MSMEs are gasping due to a steep rise in raw material prices. In a first, the entrepreneurs of the micro medium and small enterprises (MSME) went on a one-day strike across the country on Monday. Affected severely by the policies of the Union government, the ill-planned lockdown in March 2020, and now by the...

-TheWire.in A claim of an 8.4% real GDP growth rate has little relevance even as rural India battles plummeting wage levels, depleted incomes and widespread unemployment. With the release of the GDP figures for the quarter ending September, the government machinery has been in full swing advancing the narrative that economic growth is indeed back on track. However, sorely missing from these narratives is the inconvenient factoid on the currently dismal state of...

-TheWire.in The report by the CHRI urges India to ratify the Domestic Workers Convention or 'C189' as a step towards streamlining national protections for an enormous sector that is largely left to fend for itself.  New Delhi: While domestic workers across the world have suffered in the COVID-19 pandemic, the astounding lack of overarching legal or policy provisions in India to safeguard their wellbeing has meant a dire downward spiral for men...