Labour pain

Modern slavery in India remains stubbornly high

A notable sign of the long-term structural weaknesses of India’s economic reform has been the inability to meaningfully expand the market for jobs in sync with its demographic growth, which sees 1 million young people join the workforce each month. One disturbing indicator of this serial failure of governance has been India’s consistent high ranking in the annual Global Slavery Index published by the Australia-based human rights group Walk Free Foundation. Though the prolonged global slowdown has seen a distressing rise in the global incidence of modern slavery – from an estimated 30 million in 2013 to 46 million in