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…
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…
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…
A curated set of 35+ articles published in ‘The India Forum’ during a year which began with the demonstrations against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, ended with the farmer protests against the new…
Urban workers have been the most badly hit by Covid-19. An employment guarantee would provide income support & also improve urban public services. Criticisms that it is unaffordable & that it…
The three new labour codes passed by Parliament without discussion make sweeping changes to labour laws; they reduce the regulatory powers of the government; they hand over some oversight functions…
During the lockdown, migrant workers have produced ‘proofs’ to lay claim to promised aid, display grief and gratitude, and to archive violence they faced. These fragments from the worker-as-witness…
The precarisation of labour is written into the very logic of platform business models. Ignoring this, and focusing only on social security measures to protect workers, normalises exploitative labour…
The devastating effects of the pandemic upon the working poor should be a recognition of the collapse of our moral centre as a nation and as a people. The elite have exiled the poor from their…
The abysmally low participation of women in paid work in India even today is very worrying. Policy interventions should look at how to encourage higher work participation, through offers of higher…
