K R Shyam Sundar

A critical appraisal and some suggestions on the Karnataka Platform Based Gig Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Bill, 2023.

On March 18, 2025, the Joint Platform for Central Trade Unions is set to organise a convention on the four controversial Labour Codes, as the central government charts out the plan for their implementation by the end of the month. As trade unions prepare to resist the anti-worker Codes, a litany of challenges confronts them - from a lack of consensus on the final demands within the movement to the practical efficacy of organised protests by themselves. Yet, there are a few things that can be done.

Despite the crucial service provided by ASHA, mid-day meal and Anganwadi workers across India’s debilitated regions, their key demands to be recognised as government workers and not scheme-based workers or volunteers have not been met so far.

In August 2021, the central government launched the E-Shram Portal - National Database of Unorganized Workers at a budget of Rs 704 crores. An ambitious project, this study reveals that the progress has been tardy - states like Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Gujarat are way behind their targets. The Supreme Court, which has been closely monitoring migrant workers’ plight in a suo moto case, must strongly intervene.

An obituary to senior counsel Sanjay Singhvi, with whose passing the labour movement has lost a humanist, a brilliant labour lawyer and a valiant warrior

In 1990, India mooted the concept of a National Floor Level Minimum Wage. Today, as millions of unorganized workers await, the State seems to have abdicated its constitutional, and legal and moral responsibility.

What gig workers need is not just social security but identity as workers under labour laws.

Two forgotten labour commission reports from the early 2000s had key lessons for the future of social security in India.

The government's plan to implement all four Labour Codes simultaneously is legally shoddy, democratically suspect, and premature. Here are twelve reasons why.