The two day 43rd Session of the Indian Labour Conference (ILC), the apex national tripartite body that discusses key issues affecting labour and employment and provides policy perspectives and recommendations, concluded in New Delhi today. The Conference was inaugurated by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Tuesday 23rd November 2010. Senior level representatives of the three pillars of the tripartism, Trade Unions, Employers’ Associations and Government, participated in the deliberations...

A parliamentary committee has asked the government to consider incentivising private players to set up grain storage facilities as it prepares to implement the right to food. The government will require around 620 lakh tonnes of foodgrain annually to implement the food security law. The official procurement stood at 539.75 lakh tonnes in the recent marketing year. “(The) government should provide soft loans at affordable rates and subsidies to private players to...

Acknowledging that some labour laws have not yielded the desired results, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said there is a need to revisit some of them which have hurt the growth of employment. "We have enacted several progressive labour laws since independence and some even before that. But it appears that not all these laws have had the intended good effects that we would like to see on the ground," he...

Rising food prices have not yet reached crisis levels but they are expected to remain very volatile for about the next decade, researchers said Thursday. The conclusions were based on a new study of the factors that contributed to the 2007-08 food crisis, which researchers hope will shed light on what actions might be taken to avoid food crises in the future. "There were many suspects for what caused the crisis, but...

The Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) has decided to purchase stocks from farmers, who have been on a warpath for two months demanding a higher support price for their crop. Sources said bowing to pressure from farmers and political parties, the Union government cleared the decks for launching purchase centres by CCI in the state. Field-level officials at CCI, however, are still wary about the arrival of poor quality of stocks...