-Hindustan Times A country’s unemployment rate can increase or decrease over time, and people can move from one form of employment to another. But headline numbers on unemployment rate and kind of employment do not tell us about the degree of churn in the Labour Market. One of the most basic concepts in economics is stock versus flow. Stock is a variable measured at a point in time. An individual’s net worth...

One is almost certain to hear this from an economist that if something is available at free of cost or at a subsidised rate thanks to government intervention, then people tend to overuse or overconsume such goods/ commodities. So, the best solution is to create a market for such 'almost freely available' or 'highly subsidised' goods or commodities. Once people start paying to use or consume such goods/ commodities, they...

-The Hindu The Quarterly Employment Survey for the April-June quarter throws up some perplexing numbers The Labour Bureau released the results of the All-India Quarterly Establishment-based Employment Survey (QES) for the first quarter (FQ) of 2021 (April to June). The survey covers establishments employing 10 or more workers in the organised segment in nine sectors (manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, education, health, accommodation and restaurants, IT/BPO, and financial service activities). These sectors account...

The newly released Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (NSS 77th Round) establishes the fact that the farm households are more and more relying on wage incomes instead of 'net incomes from crop cultivation' for their livelihoods. In Marxian lexicon, proletarisation (a term that we can loosely use for depeasantisation) refers to the process in which the farmers/ tillers are...

-The Hindu The swell of public opinion in China has enabled government regulation and change in company policy On September 20, 2021, the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers, on behalf of gig workers, filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court demanding that the Union government provide succour to workers affected by the pandemic. The petition has asked for ‘gig workers’ and ‘platform workers’ to be declared as ‘unorganised workers’...