ON LINE DIGITAL ARCHIVE ON INDIAN LABOUR INAUGURATED BY SHARAD YADAV

The Labour Minister Shri Sharad Yadav inaugurated the 'Online Digital Archive" on Indian labour at the V.V.Giri National Labour Institute at NOIDA in Uttar Pradesh today. Congratulating the National Labour Institute for providing World Wide Web Access to the Digital Archives of Indian Labour, Shri Yadav described it as a valuable gift to the nation on the occasion of the May Day. Describing it as timely Shri Yadav said that creation of information systems would help policy makers and experts to arrive at realistic understanding of the nature and extent of issues related to labour market. He said that the uniqueness of the Archives lies at its fully digital design, which makes it as the only one of its kind in the country. The V.V. Giri National Labour Institute has been engaged in the developing of Digital Archives as a core activity of its specialised programme on labour history research. It has been developed with the state of art technology of document preservation and retrieval. This data bank includes among other documents the reports of all the commissions and committee on labour till 1920s and the complete set of First National Commission on Labour set up in 1969. It can be accessed on www.indialabourarchives.org. Earlier in his valedictory address at the panel discussion on Labour Information in the Digital Age", the Labour Minister said that the creation of the labour archive on the country's working class is of immense importance as it stores the documents of the Indian working class movement for the posterity. He expressed satisfaction over adequate thrust being given to workers in the informal sector which, he said, has been largely neglected in the conventional labour history.