The Bangladesh tragedy exposes the callousness of the garment business. (Editorial)

One year on, the Maruti workers continue to be punished for demanding their rights. (Editorial)

How do mass slum resettlement programmes in expanding megacities contribute to the reproduction of urban poverty? Chennai's premier resettlement colony, Kannagi Nagar, housing slum-dwellers evicted from the city since 2000 has integrated itself into the industrial, commercial and software economies of the information technology corridor on unfavourable terms, swelling the supply of unskilled casual workers for local firms.

With faltering industrial demand, workers are in a difficult situation with little room to manoeuvre. (Editorial)

An assessment of the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union’s struggles against the Suzuki management in Manesar (Gurgaon) reveals that like central trade unions, plant unions also tend to reproduce a form of bureaucratic functioning. This results in a split between leaders and the rank and file – a tendency which often leads to the betrayal of the interests of the struggling workers.

The fact that an economy, even when it experiences a higher growth rate in the capitalist segment, is saddled with an increasing unemployment rate, goes against the grain of conventional growth theory as indeed of the basic presumption underlying policymaking. In India, for instance, faced with growing misery in the midst of accelerating growth, the standard response has been that such “exclusion” will disappear if the growth rate can be further accelerated.