-The Indian Express Domestic workers must be brought within the purview of labour laws. The extreme abuse and mistreatment of domestic workers is becoming a part of day-to-day city life, as the recent cases of brutality in Delhi show. This is not to suggest that such incidents never occurred before, but the intensity and scale of such brutal violence are definitely becoming worse. This is alarming, given that there has been a...

-The Hindustan Times New Delhi: We had not yet recovered from the horror played out in Member of Parliament Dhananjay Singh's home in New Delhi's VIP enclave when another horrific case of maid abuse tumbled out from a middle-class neighbourhood in east Delhi last week. A 55-year-old Non-Resident Indian, in town to take care of her ailing mother, allegedly tortured her maid by branding her with hot kitchen tongs. A minor...

-The Hindu The Union Ministry of Labour has done well to raise the salary cap for availing Employees' State Insurance (ESI) to Rs.25,000. While the move is expected to expand coverage to an additional five million workers and their dependents, this is still small comfort in a country where barely three per cent of the workforce enjoys any social protection. The evolution of ESI has been characterised by an accent...

-The Economic Times Sometimes, putting one and one together does make 11, but many of us seem hardwired in our thoughts to assume rural income growth is a zero-sum game. For example, some people believe subsidies have driven the 15-20 per cent a-year growth in rural wages over the last five years. They come up with "explanations", including "people are selling land and consuming", "rising minimum support prices", and "NREGA is...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: For the beleaguered UPA government, here are some words of praise. The flagship rural employment guarantee scheme has comes in for praise from the World Bank, five years after it described the programme as "policy barrier" to economic development and poverty alleviation. The World Development Report 2014 has described the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act as a "stellar example of rural development". At the heart...