-Down to Earth Biometric-based unique identity or Aadhaar is leading to huge problems for people working for the rural employment guarantee scheme and for others receiving welfare benefits. Not only have enrolments been done shoddily but the experience of the pilot projects shows that it is almost impossible to authenticate the work-hardened fingerprints of the poor, find Latha Jishnu and Jyotika Sood. Besides, there is the overwhelming issue of deficient online...

The robust 9 per cent –plus growth in South Asia till 2010, driven largely by India, where it came down to around 7 per cent in 2011-12, had one major qualifier: it was mostly associated with a rapid rise in labour productivity rather than an expansion in employment, according to the latest report Global Employment Trends from International Labour Office. Up until the end of the millennium, that is just a...

Difficult times call for difficult measures. Pushed into a corner by an unsustainable fiscal deficit and various sectors and programs (including the proposed food security legislation) screaming for a greater share of the budget pie, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in India has been forced to do what it might not have otherwise—reduce its marquee job guarantee scheme’s allocation in a big way for the first time.  In one...

-The Economic Times   Shibu Joseph ( Why I am Quitting my Job, ET, March 29) suggests, tongue-in-cheek, that he should quit the drudgery of corporate life and, instead, enjoy the "freebies" given to the aam aadmi, like the right to work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).  I am not going to write on behalf of the crores of people who work in this programme, because I am...

Rising wages in both rural and urban India have contributed to inflation, and managing price levels when wages are rising is key to deriving benefits from higher growth, the Reserve Bank of India has said.  "The pressure on generalised inflation from sustained increase in wage costs has been one important characteristic of the recent high inflation episode. Wage increases for unskilled labourers in rural areas continue to be at a rate...