-Business Standard Trade unions slam decision, employers welcome it, saying it was absolutely necessary especially in absence of grants from govt to industry for wage payment  In what may come as a major relief to businesses, the Union government has withdrawn its order directing employers to pay wages to workers, even with units remaining shut during lockdown. On Sunday, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had issued a fresh set of guidelines which...

-TheWire.in In an op-ed, the IT services billionaire has said that diluting "already lax laws" will exacerbate conditions of low-wage earners. New Delhi: IT services firm Wipro founder Azim Premji on Saturday said he was shocked to learn of recent decisions taken by various state governments to weaken labour laws. In an op-ed in the Economic Times, the Indian billionaire argued that the dilution of “already lax laws” would not boost economic activity. “This...

-The Telegraph India's high dependence on imported active pharmaceutical ingredients is the result of its own failures and astute Chinese policies India’s pharmaceutical industry imports over 70 per cent of key chemical ingredients and will find it challenging to heed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call on Tuesday for self-reliance across sectors, experts said. India’s high dependence on imported active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) has been the outcome of Chinese policies designed to dominate the...

-TheThirdPole.net Fisheries markets collapsed in the first days of the lockdown, impoverishing hundreds of thousands of small fishers, and recovery is nowhere in sight When Pradip Chatterjee, president of Dakshinbanga Matsyajibi Forum (South Bengal Fishers’ Forum – DMF), starts talking about the problems that plague small scale fishers in West Bengal, there is no stopping him. He finds a multitude of issues that confront them, from climate change to Covid-19. DMF is...

-Livemint.com As announced by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, 25 million farmers who do not have a Kisan Credit Card will now be able to avail concessional credit The government on Thursday decided to boost the flow of credit to the agriculture by attempting to bring more farmers under the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme and through an additional outlay for farm loan refinance. As announced by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, 25 million farmers...