Despite its seminal success in beginning a process of addressing issues of poverty, starvation and empowering the poor, the MGNREGA needed a general election to breathe life into it. However, the disproportionate influence of the middle class on social sector policy has led to the same set of pre-election prejudices resurfacing. "What use is the MGNREGA to the economy at large?" asks the businessman, one eye fixed apprehensively on the share...

The first-ever annual employment survey by the Labour Bureau under the Union Ministry of Labour points to a “jobless economic growth” last fiscal year. During the bureau’s survey period 2009-10 — also the year in which India’s gross domestic product grew by 7.4 per cent — unemployment was 9.4 per cent. The National Sample Survey Organisation, using its Consumer Expenditure Survey for 2007-08, had painted a rosy unemployment figure of 2.8...

Labour Bureau has been conducting quick quarterly employment surveys in the selected sectors of the economy at the enterprise level to assess the impact of economic slowdown on employment in India. With a view to study the overall employment-unemployment situation in the country, Labour Bureau has now conducted its first national level household survey in 28 States/UT Except five North Eastern States and the Islands of Lakshadweep and the Andaman...

The unemployment rate in the labour force was estimated to be 9.4 per cent during the 2009-10 financial year, a government survey has said. The Indian jobless rate was till now arrived at strictly by guesswork. According to the first national level household survey conducted by the Labour Bureau, out of 1,000 employed persons, 455 were employed in agriculture, forestry and fisheries group during this period. The survey was conducted with a view...

The poster boy of microfinance is now seeking some anonymity. In Andhra Pradesh, the epicentre of the worst crisis faced by microfinance in India, SKS Microfinance is playing down its identity and going into preservation mode. At its modest office in a residential colony in Warangal district, India’s largest microfinance company has taken down its board. At its head office in upmarket Begumpet in Hyderabad, it hung a cloth mesh...