-The Hindu The Supreme Court’s unyielding criticism of the government for not eradicating the practice of manual scavenging was the springboard for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to introduce the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012 in the Lok Sabha on September 3. Welcomed as a panacea for the historically iniquitous, caste-ordained practice of manually handling human waste, the new Bill indicates renewed commitment...

-The Hindu The Cabinet decision to seek total prohibition of child labour is a step long overdue The Cabinet Committee has passed the proposal seeking a total ban on employing children under 14 years and of 14-18 year olds in hazardous occupations. When passed in Parliament as law, it will be a huge milestone in the journey that many of us had started in the mid-1980s. This also marks a milestone in...

-The Hindu The listing of the Protection of Women Against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill for discussion and adoption in the current session of Parliament is a welcome step. It is also welcome that the government has reversed its earlier unjustifiable position of keeping domestic workers outside the purview of the proposed legislation. Amendments moved on August 7 now include these sections of working women in a sector which has seen...

-The Business Standard No movement yet on quality control in higher education The state of professional higher education in India is abysmal. Consider engineering. All told, there are 1.5 million engineering seats in the country. Almost a third of these are unfilled, so about a million engineers are produced every year. Yet, barely 10 per cent of them are readily employable. About a quarter don’t know enough English to make sense...

-The Economic Times Nearly 6 crore formal sector employees could look forward to retiring with a minimum pension of Rs 1,000 a month, in addition to their provident fund savings, if the finance ministry green signals a labour ministry proposal to increase the pension of PF subscribers.   At present, most provident fund subscribers receive less than Rs 500 a month as pension after decades of service, with some getting as low as...