The World Economic Outlook – a bi-annual publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -- released in October 2020 has anticipated that the economic progress made by the countries since the 1990s to reduce poverty would be turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of that, economic disparity would rise too in the post-COVID world because the crisis has disproportionately impacted women, informal sector workers and people with...

-The Hindu The SJM resolution repeatedly referred to the Reliance Industries’ foray into the retail sector and warned that local kirana stores would be transformed into fulfilment centres for Jio Mart. The Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) on December 13 demanded that the government not allow a “nexus” of multinational companies and large Indian business houses such as Reliance Industries to dominate the retail industry in the country as it would lead to...

-Business Standard The tentative data sourced from the GKRA website shows that since June, around 1.10 million works have been completed under the campaign. Much of the Rs 10,000-crore extra allocation for the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan (GKRA), an employment scheme for migrants thrown adrift by the sudden lockdown in March, will be spent on works done through the flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and rural housing project....

-The Hindu It can be made workable if there is political will and fiscal resources As economies around the world struggle to recover from the double whammy of a pandemic and a lockdown, unemployment is soaring. In India, the land of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the promise of jobs and the politics of unemployment have a long history. Can a citizen demand work as a right, and...

-The Hindu Several myths persist about job creation, which can misguide policymaking Jobs are rarely far from the minds of citizenry. Politicians woke up to this fact in the run-up to the Bihar Assembly elections. It is for the first time that unemployment has become a big issue in an election. This is not surprising. Rising unemployment The economy had been slowing for nine quarters prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Before the 2019 Lok...