-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from govt to industry for wage payment  In what may come as a major relief to businesses, the Union government has withdrawn its order directing employers to pay wages to workers, even with units remaining shut during lockdown.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...

-The Hindu By suspending labour laws, states are exploiting the unique opportunity provided by the National Lockdown As India slowly attempts to lift its nationwide lockdown, under compulsion of reviving the economy, labour rights are disappearing at an astonishing pace. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, which are States ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, took the lead in suspending crucial labour laws for varying lengths of time. Undemocratic introduction This strategy visualises effecting...

-Mongabay.com * The COVID-19 pandemic has shown up major fault lines in our development trajectory and one of the issues is how we account for growth and progress with the gross national product (GNP) calculated as a single bottom line, without paying heed to the ecological, environmental and social costs. * Air and water pollution have been shown to add a significant cost to India’s GNP. A greener GNP will take these...

-Article-14.com The Centre’s ‘single source of truth’ in easing lockdowns is a database of Covid-19 cases ridden with unverified data, duplicate names and other flaws. States, some protesting at the confusion, use another database and only in five states do the two databases tally. Mumbai: Two of four parameters that the Centre currently uses to decide severity of the Covid-19 pandemic and ease lockdown restrictions are based on an inaccurate database maintained...

-The Hindu For employers, availability of skilled workforce and worker-management ties are more vital Some State governments including Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) and Madhya Pradesh (M.P.) have proposed ordinances to exempt manufacturing establishments from the purview of most labour laws. In a discussion moderated by Suresh Seshadri, Amit Basole (Associate Professor of Economics, Azim Premji Unversity, Bengaluru) and K.R. Shyam Sundar (Professor of Human Resource Management, XLRI, Jamshedpur) look at the backdrop for...