At the 62ndAnnual Labour Economic Conference of the Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), the clear message was India needs to take effective policy measures to address the issue in coming years if it has to meet the SDG target of providing decent employment to all by 2030.
The conference hosted at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITRoorkee) began on April 11 and is being attended by around 500 delegates including a number of distinguished scholars, policy-makers, trade unionists and other professionals from all over India and many from other parts of the world, are participating in the Conference physically. Over the course of three days around 250 paper presentations on the three themes of the Conference will be made in 37 technical sessions and deliberate on issues concerning labour economics in 8 panel discussions. It is expected that these deliberations connect the various tracks of dialogue and serve as policy inputs for government in the region.
Professor J Krishnamurty, a former ILO Official, a researcher of International repute delivered the keynote address in the inaugural function and spoke about the pioneers of Indian Labour Studies who have contributed to discourse on labour and employment issues. The inaugural session of the conference was graced by the presence Professor Ajit Kumar Chaturvedi, Director, IIT Roorkee,; Deepak Nayyar, President, Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE) and Former Vice-Chancellor, University of Delhi; Alakh N. Sharma, President, 62nd ISLE Conference Editor, Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Professor and Director, Institute for Human Development; J. Krishnamurty, Former Professor, Delhi School of Economics and Former Senior Economists, ILO; S.P. Singh and Falguni Patrnaik, Professors at Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee, Uttarakhand and Organising Secretary and Associate organizing Secretary respectively, 62nd ISLE Conference; Amit Basole, Head, Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University, Bangalore; Dilip Ratha, Head, KNOMAD and Lead Economist, Migration and Remittances Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice, The World Bank; ShahraRazavi, Director, Social Protection Department, International LabourOrganisation, Geneva; Meher Pudumjee, Chairperson, Thermax Ltd., Pune; Abhijit Sen, Former Member, Planning Commission, Government of India; Kamala Sankaran, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Delhi; Indira Hirway, Director and Professor of Economics Centre For Development Alternatives (CFDA), Ahmedabad; K.P. Kannan, Fellow and Former Director, Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum; Mariko Ouchi, Senior Technical Specialist on Social Protection Decent Work Technical Team, ILO, South Asia; Jeemol Unni, Professor at Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad; T. Sundararaman, Adjunct Professor, JIPMER International School of Public Health, Pondicherry; Dipak Kumar Singh, IAS, Additional Chief Secretary and In-charge of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of Bihar; Santosh Mehrotra, Visiting Professor, Centre for Development, Bath University, UK and Dagmar Walter, Director, ILO Decent Work Technical Support Team for South Asia and Country Office for India shared their insight.
