Wages are a perennial issue in the Indian market, and this was exemplified during the recent labour unrest in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, during the month of April, which brought attention back to India's changing labour laws and the difficult realities of putting them into effect. What started as a protest over pay problems slowly turned into tense fights in some parts of the industrial area. There were reports of injuries and damage to public property, including cars being set on

The structure of labour laws in India for the past seven decades was not only filled with a web of bureaucracy and complex, sometimes overlapping, rules, but also incompatible with the vision of the new industrial and innovative India. Illustration by The Geostrata This reality was embraced by the Government of India and the Ministry of Labour and Employment when Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya introduced four new bills to the parliament, which replaced the web of the previo

For over a decade, Pakistan has enjoyed one of the more generous trade arrangements the European Union offers any developing country. The GSP+ scheme, which grants zero-tariff access for roughly two-thirds of EU tariff lines, was never meant to be an unconditional gift. It was designed as an incentive structure: preferential access in exchange for the ratification and, crucially, the effective implementation of twenty-seven international conventions covering human rights, lab

From a toothbrush to a laptop, everything we need now arrives in under 30 minutes, driven by the engines of our gig economy, its workers. However, beneath all that facade, the paradox stares right back at us when these very convenience providers are today battling for basic protection and labour rights. Illustration by The Geostrata According to Niti Aayog, India had 7.7 million workers in 2020-21, a number projected to further soar to 23.5 million workers by 2029-30. With