Labour

Should One Even Consider Making Domestic Work Part of the Gig Economy?

Apps to hire domestic workers reinforce the perception that household work should be done inexpensively by unskilled labour, and undermine the struggle for rights and fair wages.
▶21-Apr-2025
Amruta SN, Shalaka

Quantity vs Quality: Long-term Trends in Job Creation in the Indian Labour Market

Employment and wage trends since the mid-1990s have seen 3 phases of growth. In the 3rd period, since 2017–18, the ‘quantity’ of employment has grown. This has been mainly of the self-employed with…
▶31-Jan-2024
Maitreesh Ghatak, Mrinalini Jha, Jitendra Singh
Book
Book Review

Why There are Fewer and Fewer Women at Work in Bengal

Fewer women are entering the labour market in West Bengal, a decline steeper than in the rest of India. A new book examines structural factors that entrench women and girl children in underpaid,…
▶25-Sep-2023
Padmini Swaminathan
Book
Book Review

Lean Manufacturing, Straitened Labour

An oral history of the struggles of Maruti workers comes at a crucial time where the larger labour movement finds itself defending hard-won rights.
▶14-Aug-2023
Faiz Ullah

Intergenerational Labour and Just Transition in Coalfields

In coal mining districts, the nature of labour dependence on working coal may change over time, but generations will continue to rely on the industry for their livelihoods. This leaves coal…
▶01-Jun-2023
Suravee Nayak

Practice of International Labour Laws in India

Labour rights in India have been based on the norms of the International Labour Organization but these have not led to any noticeable increase in standards. India’s labour regulatory regime can…
▶01-Jun-2023
AV Jose

Gasping for Air, Bathing in Coal

The precarity of informal workers in India's coalfields point towards the need for discussions around 'just transition' to bring together climate justice and labour justice.
▶18-Aug-2022
Suravee Nayak

Undermining the Legal Guarantee of MGNREGA: Right, Left, and Centre

Governments of every political dispensation have sought to hollow out India’s rural employment guarantee scheme. Only a mass movement that keeps the vulnerable at its centre can make the MGNREGA what…
▶07-Mar-2022
Sowmya Sivakumar

Violating Freedoms and Criminalising Labour in Proposed Law on Trafficking

A new law on trafficking is to be enacted in the winter session of Parliament, but the July 2021 version of the bill fails to recognise Indian realities where trafficking is a problem of extreme…
▶23-Nov-2021
Shardha Rajam, Prabha Kotiswaran
Review Article
Book
Book Review

The Other Indians of the First World War

The Allied victory in the First World War was won on the back of the labour of non-combatant ‘coolies’, whose deployment allowed for swift mobilisation across fronts. A new book narrates the story of…
▶09-Feb-2021
Vipul Dutta