The National Advisory Council's recommendations on the National Food Security Bill are in danger of being brushed aside. It is the fate of most advisory committees that the government accepts whatever advice suits its purposes and ignores the rest. The first version of the National Advisory Council (NAC-1) managed to avoid that fate to some extent, due to favourable circumstances. NAC-1 was able to persuade the government to enact the...

After sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh, it’s now the turn of jute mills in West Bengal to reel under shortage of labour. This has forced many jute mills to reduce their production hours and go for production cuts. The 52 working jute mills in West Bengal employ around 400,000 workers and the labour shortfall is about 30 per cent. “The workers are more interested in getting engaged in different government schemes like...

When we talk of India's mammoth work force, be it in rural or urban scenarios, what comes to mind is the 'unorganised' sector. They form the multitudes that do not 'belong' to a sector governed by a slew of measures in accordance with labour laws or employment terms defined by policy measures. These are the multitudes, which fall outside the ambit of Central Government legislation pertaining to wages and salaries....

A direct outcome of the global economic crisis has been a decline in the rate of growth of wages across the world, barring Asia and Latin America. A study by the International Labour Organisation, Global Wage Report 2010-11: Wage policies in times of crisis, highlights this reality and points to the need for countries to put in place proper social and labour market policies to protect an increasingly vulnerable workforce....

Retail giants pushing the European Union-India free trade deal promise consumers a "new and dynamic retail experience" but ignore the fate of India’s "mom-and-pop" stores and some 40 million people they employ. Four years in the making, the EU-India Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement made serious headway during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Brussels Dec. 10 and is due to be signed and sealed early 2011. But the negotiations have...