-Economic and Political Weekly  The Government of India is considering a proposal to notify farming as an essential service. This is ostensibly to bring drought relief to farmers suffering from a weak monsoon - a laudable goal indeed. However, if farming is deemed an "essential service", farmers and farm workers could lose many of their political and civic rights because the government can then invoke the Essential Services Maintenance Act to...

-The Hindu The Cabinet decision to seek total prohibition of child labour is a step long overdue The Cabinet Committee has passed the proposal seeking a total ban on employing children under 14 years and of 14-18 year olds in hazardous occupations. When passed in Parliament as law, it will be a huge milestone in the journey that many of us had started in the mid-1980s. This also marks a milestone in...

-The Hindu An anthology of independent evaluations of MGNREGA shows that it has provided income security, improved health, narrowed the gender gap and created useful assets   In the midst of the debates that prevail in this country over the feasibility of the world’s largest public works programme, the MGNREGA Sameeksha — an anthology of independent research studies and analysis on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, from 2006-2012 — is...

-The Times of India The Union Cabinet on Tuesday is expected to clear the proposal to amend the anti-child labour law which proposes a complete ban on employment of children up to the age of 14 in any industry — hazardous or non-hazardous. According to the proposal, children between 14 and 18 years can be employed, but only in non-hazardous industries with property safety mechanism. As of now, the Child Labour (Prohibition and...

Two sets of government data on UPA government's most famous flagship programme Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), for which Rs. 33000 crore was earmarked in 2012-13 budget, provide widely different figures for several states, a feature which experts say is indicative of the corruption in the scheme and weakness of social audit or accountability. The government has increasingly relied on Management Information System (MIS) for monitoring NREGA at...