Work in India

Revisiting Skill Development in India

India’s skill development policy has struggled. Instead of spreading resources too thinly, public policy could achieve more by focusing on social upliftment, gender and caste equality, and regional…
▶14-Oct-2024
Juthika Patankar

Staking Claim to Entitlements under MGNREGA

There are internal constraints and structural barriers to women’s claim-making under MGNREGA. Supporting more egalitarian decision-making within the village, designing interventions that can help…
▶28-Aug-2024
Kalyani Raghunathan, Katrina Kosec, Jordan Kyle, Sudha Narayanan, Soumyajit Ray

The Productivity Debate and Women’s Work: Careers or Family Care?

Educated women leaving the workforce hurts India’s growth. But child & family care options are lacking in the work structures we now have. We need “bridge” jobs, like part-time work, to help…
▶23-Apr-2024
Mala Khullar, Ratna M Sudarshan
Book
NREGA: A REPORT ON THE STATES

New Challenges for NREGA in Telangana

Union Government policies, budget cuts, and technological changes to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee programme have made things harder for workers in Telangana, where earlier…
▶20-Dec-2023
Chakradhar Buddha, Anuradha De, Diwakar Mantri

Making Sense of Recent Developments in the Indian Labour Market

The PLFS for 2022-23 reports the highest workforce participation rate and the lowest unemployment rate in the last six years. This has been the result of the entry of an increasing number of women…
▶17-Oct-2023
Akshit Arora
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

Growth, Structural Change, and Opportunities: Who has Benefited?

While the connection between GDP and job growth in India has been poor, there has been a rapid increase of women in the modern services; while there has been greater job mobility, this has been very…
▶20-Sep-2023
Amit Basole, Akshit Arora, M. K. Shravan

Big Problems, Small Wins

Despite good intentions, much in the new Rajasthan gig workers act is built on weak foundations, which will make it difficult to implement. This makes it unlikely that the workers will actually get…
▶22-Aug-2023
Sabina Dewan
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

Rajasthan’s Killer Sandstone Mines

Mine workers in Rajasthan are perhaps the most vulnerable among manual workers in India’s unorganised sector. They are exposed to various kinds of dust, which makes them very susceptible to…
▶08-Aug-2023
Seema Sharma