Impact of labour attributes and probability of employability in Indian labour market: A sectoral analysis

The structural transition of an economy helps the nations to move from primary to secondary and then to tertiary sector for the total output and employment generation. However, the absence of this systematic structural transition could lead the nation into long‐term imbalances for employment and output. This is happening with India as its economy has directly moved from primary to tertiary sector for both output and employment generation. The present study helps to identify the main reasons about why India is still stagnating with its sluggish primary sector for employment generation. This will also show the existing pattern of occupational choices for the people of different labour attributes. The study usages the fourth and fifth survey of employment and unemployment conducted by the Labour Bureau in 2012–13 and 2014–15 over 1,087,968 individuals of India. The study applies both multinomial logit model and binary logit model for analysing the employment probabilities of the individuals for working in the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors. The study finds that location and education are the most important factor affecting the employment choices of the individuals, whereas caste and gender are also important but with moderate impact. The location is found crucial factor for primary and secondary sector occupation, whereas secondary sector is neutral in this regard. The service sector is found to have the highest incidences of caste discrimination and favouritism in the labour market. The education has the highest impact on the service sector jobs.     

The Federal Solution: Assessment and Prognosis for Nigeria and Africa

Federalism has not been a resounding success in Africa, althoughunitary regimes have had no better record One promising politicalsystem has been the consistently federal and periodically democraticgovernment of Nigeria. The principal challenges facing Nigeria,which are not unlike those facing other heterogeneous Africancountries, are national unity, democratic politics, and socioeconomicdevelopment. Examined here are the nature of these challenges,Nigeria's responses, potential alternatives, and possible implicationsof Nigeria's experience for federal democracy in Africa.     

Party government in Central Eastern European democracies: A data collection (1990–2003)

Abstract.  This article provides a systematic comparative overview of party governments in 11 Central Eastern European countries. The review is based on the compilation of a cross-national data set on post-communist party governments from 1990 to 2003. The presentation of the data is organised in the same way as the party government data for Western democracies presented by Woldendorp et al. in 1998. Thus, the data provide empirical grounds for further comparative research on party governments in Central Eastern European countries, as well as among Central Eastern and Western Europe.     

Travails of Truth: Achieving Justice for Victims of Impunity in Nigeria

Following its transition to democracy from an authoritarianmilitary rule marked by gross violations of human rights, Nigeriaestablished the Human Rights Violations Investigations Commission(HRVIC) in 1999. This paper critically examines the contributionsof the HRVIC, popularly known as the ‘Oputa Panel,’to the field of transitional justice and the rule of law. Itsets out the process of establishing the Commission, its mandateand how this mandate was interpreted during the course of theCommission's work. The challenges faced by the Oputa Panel,particularly those that relate to its legal status and relationshipwith the judiciary, are analyzed in an attempt to draw usefulguidelines from these challenges for other truth commissions.Recourse by powerful individuals to the judicial process ina bid to shield themselves from the HRVIC merits particularreview as it raises questions regarding the transformation ofthe judiciary and the rule of law in the wake of an authoritarianregime.     

PPBS in Nigeria: Its origin,progress and problems

One of the normative models of budgeting prescribed for the Third World countries is PPBS. This paper examines the attempts made by the Nigerian Federal Government to make PPBS part of its budgeting system. Although the idea of PPBS was first highlighted by the 1974 Udoji Public Service Review Commission, it was only in 1980 that a serious attempt was made to start experimenting with PPBS. It was hoped that, by the end of the 1983, PPBS would be fully utilized in all the government ministries and departments. It was the intention of the government to use PPBS to achieve a ‘coordinated and comprehensive’ budgetary system that relates cost with output in order to achieve ‘quick results’ in the implementation of its programme. However, as at the end of 1986, apart from documentary reform (that is improvement in classification of expenditure categories in the budget documents), not much was achieved in Nigeria. In addition to the general difficulties encountered with PPBS in other places where it was tried, the effectiveness of PPBS was circumscribed by a variety of institutional, economic and political factors. The paper concludes by asking whether the exercise was not a retreat from the reality facing the country.     

Self-help training for planning urban development: An innovation in on-the-job learning in Nigeria

Forced to be innovative, a short course conducted in Nigeria for urban planners produced good results, although the bulk of the direction and teaching was provided by government town planners with no previous teaching experience. A crucial factor appears to have been the course structure, which was not only based upon learning while performing a project, but also required repetition of the project tasks in two cycles. The learning was enhanced because the project was a piece of work from the current programme of the planning agency which operated the course. This effect, and the utility of the conclusions of the project work, are likely to contribute significantly to the institutional development of the planning agency. There are important implications for further training of this kind in Nigeria, implying that experienced trainers are less in need, that a group capable of conducting future short courses can be built of government planning officers, and that training should be conducted within operating institutions of government.     

Women in labour: The flapper vote and party system transformation in Britain

The impact of the enfranchisement of women under 30 upon the British party system is analyzed, especially the extent to which the Labour party at a crucial period in its rise to major party status was able to mobilize an uncommitted major segment of the electorate. The analysis seeks to supply an explanation missing from Butler and Stokes' finding of a sizable gender difference in class crossover voting among the interwar cohort. Both substantive and symbolic mobilization efforts are analyzed. Analysis of constituency electoral results for elections from the mid-1920s through the mid-1930s finds that the political crisis of 1931 undermined Labour's efforts to mobilize the female vote and appears in particular to have driven substantial numbers of working class women to vote for other parties, thereby weakening their support for Labour well into the postwar period. Labour's failure to mobilize young women meant that it was able to obtain major party status only when World War II experiences caused a substantial number of middle class men to swing to the party     

Intergovernmental relations in Nigeria: Local government and the 1979 Nigerian Constitution

This paper examines the intergovernmental relations prescribed by the Nigerian Constitution of 1979. In particular it discusses the elevated constitutional status of local government, tracing the origins of this to the 1976 local government reform. The question of how to interpret the provisions of the Constitution on the restructuring of local government and whether this is solely a State responsibility or a joint State/Federal responsibility is analysed. The article argues that the States have political and administrative responsibility for local government whereas the Federal responsibility concerns the regulation of the amount of money to be distributed to local government from the Federal Account. The Lagos State High Court judgement which supports the view that States have political and administrative responsibility for local government, but nullified the State's legislation, is extensively reported and analysed. Also discussed is the Allocation of Revenue (Federation Account, etc.) Act 1981 which both reflects and supports the view that the federal relationship to local government is defined by finance. The paper also probes the intention of the Constituent Assembly by analysing its report. The paper complements that by Smith and Owojaiye in the previous number.     

Planning democracy in Africa: A comparative perspective on Nigeria and Ghana

Ghana and Nigeria are in the midst of government-initiated democratization programs. This paper compares the different settings, reasons, strategies, procedures, and implementation of democratization efforts in these two countries. While Nigeria's comprehensive approach to democratic planning has enabled elite continuity, it has neither assured regime stability nor enhanced state capacities. In contrast, Ghana's plan for democratic transformation, pursued in a piecemeal fashion, has resulted in regime stability and some state consolidation, but not in democratization. In both countries, there is little doubt that the unintended consequences of each approach may prove more significant than the direct results of successful policy implementation. Thus, even if the specific design for democracy may fail, the democratic project in these West African states may nevertheless be progressing.     

Terror,territoriality and the struggle for indigeneity and citizenship in northern Nigeria

The struggle of the minority ethnic groups against the majority Hausa-Fulani ethnic-amalgam in the north of Nigeria has persisted. As a result of the twentieth-century jihad and politico-cultural and economic factors, Fulani (Muslims) are found in many parts of the minority areas of the geographical north. Many of the minority ethnic groups often claim to be ‘indigenous’ to the areas and regard the Fulani – and Hausa – as ‘settlers’. The struggle for political, economic and social values and rights in these communities often produce violent clashes between these indigenous groups and the settler Hausa-Fulani. This paper uses the territorial claims and counter-claims over indigeneity in the Yelwa area between the Tarok/other ethnic (Christian) groups and the Fulani/other ethnic (Muslim) groups which degenerated into serial blood-letting in 2004 to interrogate the citizen-deficit in Nigeria, and the contradictions of reconciling indigenous rights with citizenship rights in a typical multi-ethnic postcolonial state.     

Economic change and labour market policy: Corporatist and dualist tendencies in britain and Sweden

This article explicates John Goldthorpe's recent analytical distinction between ‘corporatist’ and ‘dualist’ tendencies in Western political economies. By linking these categories to macro‐economic strategies, the role of trade unions and the circumstances under which state policy is initiated, this dichotomy can be of value in the analysis of these polities. The article examines the major characteristics of British and Swedish labour market policy in the areas of wage policy, trade unions and training and education as they relate to the respective macro‐economic policies adopted by British and Swedish governments. These provide examples of the presence and development of corporatist and dualist tendencies in these two countries.     

Federalism and the Management of External Relations in Nigeria: Lessons from the Past and Challenges for the Future

Despite successive military regimes, state and local governmentsin Nigeria have been able to engage in limited forms of foreignaffairs activity. both directly abroad and indirectly throughinstitutions of the national government. The trend since independencehas been to make foreign affairs an exclusive responsibilityof the federal government. Generally, though, the military regimeshave been better able than the civilian governments to limitconstituent diplomacy. Under the Third Republic, therefore,state and local governments are likely to assert themselvessomewhat more in foreign affairs than they have recently.     

Unfree labour in immigration detention: exploitation and coercion of a captive immigrant workforce

This paper focuses on labour within immigration detention in the United Kingdom, offering an original national case study as well as a new conceptual framework for analysing such practices. It does so through an innovative engagement with recent literatures on forced labour, unfreedom and hyper-precarity, particularly amongst irregular migrants. We advance two key arguments in this paper. First, that the available data on labour within immigration detention indicate that detainees should legally be considered employees and granted access to labour protections, including the national minimum wage. Second, that work in immigration detention is an example of state-sanctioned exploitative, coercive and unfree labour amongst a hyper-precarious group of the population. This case has implications for other country contexts where immigration detention is used.     

Barely legal: racism and migrant farm labour in the context of Canadian multiculturalism

This article investigates how colonial attitudes towards race operate alongside official multiculturalism in Canada to justify the legally exceptional exclusion of migrant farm workers from Canada's socio-political framework. The Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program is presented in this article as a relic of Canada's racist and colonial past, one that continues uninterrupted in the present age of statist multiculturalism. The legal continuation and growth in the use of non-citizens to conduct labour distasteful to Canadian nationals has provided an effective means for the Canadian state to regulate the ongoing flow of non-preferred races on the margins while promoting a pluralist and ethnically diverse political image at home and abroad. In the face of a labour shortage constructed as a political crisis of considerable urgency, the Canadian state has continued to admit non-immigrants into the country to perform labour deemed unattractive yet necessary for the well-being of Canadian citizens while simultaneously suspending the citizenship and individual rights of those same individual migrant workers. By legislating the restriction of rights and freedoms to a permanently revolving door of temporary non-citizens through the mechanism of a guest worker programme, the Canadian state is participating in the bio-political regulation of foreign nationals.     

Boom and Bust Budgeting: Repetitive Budgetary Processes in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana

One of the least studied topics in comparative budgeting is how governments budget during economic and boom and bust cycles. Theory and past evidence suggest that national budgets of poorer countries are made and remade continuously over these periods. Case material from Nigeria as well as supplemental information from Ghana and Kenya illustrate the principal features of the persistence, types, and sequence of such repetitive budgeting. The experience of the three countries in boom and bust budgeting has considerable implications both for a theory of comparative budgeting and for national budget management and policy in Subsaharan Africa specifically.     

Omissions and contradictions in an African co-operative experiment: The case of Nigeria

This brief evaluation of the co-operative organizational apparatus in Nigeria examines three aspects of a ‘co-operative ideology’; the basis of the co-operative idea; the form of economic organization and the organizational structure. The analysis proceeds in the framework of the ‘entrepreneurial approach’ and concludes that such an ideology must reflect among other things, the economically inaltruistic and individualistic nature of human behaviour that is found in Nigerian traditional communities.     

Unfree labour and adverse incorporation in the global economy: comparative perspectives on Brazil and India

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of unfree labour in the contemporary global economy, the processes by which it is generated, and its connections with poverty and vulnerability. I challenge dominant ‘residual’ views of unfree labour as either external to global economic activity or occurring solely within small-scale, localized or non-market contexts. Instead, I contend that unfree labour needs to be understood in ‘relational’ terms as a particular form of ‘adverse incorporation’ in the global economy. This form of adverse incorporation is constituted through the circular interaction between, on the one hand, the functioning of the global productive economy and associated labour markets, and, on the other, the social relations of poverty which give rise to vulnerability and to unfree labour. I draw throughout on original empirical research conducted on ‘slave labour’ in Brazilian agriculture and child labour in the Delhi garments sector.