-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,...

-Economic and Political Weekly The current regime seeks to reform labour laws with the understanding that these reforms will improve industrial growth and expand the possibilities of enterprise. However, there is already ample evidence from within India that this obsession with reforming labour law, particularly in the way the government has done it till now, will not take us any closer in creating more jobs or a healthy industrial sector. These...

In the midst of national debates over the need for labour laws reforms and the efficacy of MG-NREGA in checking distress migration, a new report brings spotlight on the miserable living and working conditions of unorganized migrant workers from Rajasthan. Titled Their Own Country: A Profile of Labor Migration from Rajasthan, the report prepared jointly by Aajeevika Bureau and UNESCO informs us that 70% of seasonal migrant workers from Rajasthan...

-The Hindu ‘Migrant Workmen Act, 1979, often ignored' Chennai: In a bid to keep track of the workforce from other States in the city, the Chennai police have decided to create a database of migrant labourers. On Saturday, a meeting was held between the police and members of Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India (CREDAI), builders and labour department officials at the Commissionerate. "Deputy commissioners will be the nodal officers to collect...

-The Week Shambhu Kumar, 8, quite liked his job as a domestic help in a small town in Assam. He had to mind two children nearly his age, keep an eye on the ducks and be available for chores all day. It wasn't too hard, and he was well fed, too, though he missed his grandmother, a tea garden labourer. One day, some women from the state education department came to the...