The four labour codes long in the making have finally been notified. The good thing is that a legal framework now exists for a company inclined to provide social security for the gig workers it employs to actually provide it. Uber, for example, says it has been waiting for such a legal framework. Any labour law is only as good as its enforcement. Where workers and their unions are strong enough to compel enforcement, laws are complied with.
If winter comes, can spring be far behind? Given the 23.5 degree tilt of the earth’s axis, which produces the seasons during the course of the planet’s steady rotation around the sun, such poetic expectation of inevitable good tidings is pretty realistic. But the hope that if you build giant data centres, a boom in artificial intelligence capability and its applications would follow rests on shakier ground.
A ruling by the Swiss Federal Administrative Court on October 14, holding as illegal the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority’s decision to write down Credit Suisse’s Additional Tier 1 bonds, as part of the state-directed merger of troubled Credit Suisse into rival banking giant UBS, has revived hopes in India for those pursuing a case in the Supreme Court against the similar writing down of AT1 bonds issued by Yes Bank, as part of its salvage operation. Their optimism is misplaced.
The Bihar results were out even before polling began: Bihar has lost, whoever the victor in the Assembly elections. With well over one crore women being paid Rs 10,000 crore by the incumbent government, supposedly for self-employment ventures, and promises of future fiscal support for such enterprises, the political economy of state handouts had been entrenched before polling began.
The rich make competitive noise, pollute the air, switch on their air purifiers and air conditioners, and leave the less well-off to choke, wheeze and sicken
Diwali is no longer the gentle festival of lamps, gifting, good food and shared celebration. Diwali is a now a raging battleground of class aggression, in which the rich compete to show they are one up on their neighbours, bursting more copious amounts of crackers and setting off ever more spectacular fireworks. They have their hours of fun, and withdraw indoors to feast and party in rooms where air purifiers and air conditioners do double duty to scrub the air of the filth they have just injected into it.
It was excellent journalism on the part of Pranshu Verma and Ravi Nair to do the Washington Post story on the government having persuaded LIC to invest in Adani at a time when global investors were hesitant in the wake of an American case against Adani for having bribed officials in India and for having raised funds from American investors on false pretences. Kudos to the two, and to WaPo for publishing the story that Indian publications would have been reluctant to.