-The Hindu With no urban equivalent to the NREGA as yet, there must be a focus on supporting new forms of employment With the Indian economy gradually finding its feet after a historic contraction of negative 23.9% in the April-June quarter, economic commentators have busied themselves with debating the need for fiscal expansion and the viability of a “V-shaped recovery”. These debates, however, have shifted focus away from the employment question, considered...

-Scroll.in Often the sole source of income for households in villages, NREGA has been plagued with issues during the pandemic. During the lockdown, an estimated 20 million to 30 million migrant workers returned home, out of work and out of money. Some of them tried helping their families with farming and some even used the skills they had developed to set up new enterprises. But most remained jobless. The National Rural Employment...

-The Hindu With labour law reforms set to change industrial relations, trade union responses must include social dialogue too Ten central trade unions (CTUs) have called for a nation-wide strike on November 26, 2020 to condemn what they consider to be the anti-people, and anti-labour economic policies of the government. This follows strikes in the coal and defence sectors protesting privatisation and the corporatisation policies of the government. It is essential to...

-The Hindu They propose to provide the unorganised sector, gig and Platform workers access to social security benefits through a government portal. The Union Labour and Employment Ministry has notified the draft rules under the Code on Social Security, 2020, which propose to provide the unorganised sector, gig and Platform workers access to social security benefits through a government portal. The Ministry notified the draft rules on November 13 and sought suggestions and...

-The Indian Express A collective of NREGA women activists discovers its political voice. As Jean Dreze recently observed, one of the key ideas behind NREGA was that it would serve as a platform for increasing the overall political capacities of workers. It was hoped that people would organise themselves to collectively demand work and, in the process, learn about other legal and constitutional provisions. While learning about the latter has been patchy,...