-Ideas for India Labour law reform is considered as a key requirement for creation of new jobs as well as greater formalisation of existing jobs in India. In March this year, the Ministry of Labour and Employment brought out the draft social security code to amalgamate several Central labour laws and extend employment security to all workers. In this article, Sharmila Kantha discusses the positive features and practical aspects of the...

-TheWire.in Diane Coffey and Dean Spears’ Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste is a path breaking addition to the literature on child malnutrition and development policy in India. The history of global health has been marked with a dramatic turnaround starting from around the mid to late 19th century. This period witnessed an unprecedented decline in death rate and a steady increase in the life expectancy...

-Livemint.com The trajectory of wealth concentration in the country, not just the levels of recently estimated inequality, is important A flurry of estimates regarding Indian inequality have captured public interest recently. Whether one believes the wealth inequality numbers presented by Credit Suisse or the distributional income accounts by Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty, evidence seems to state that India has high economic disparities. But inequality is to be expected in a developing...

-Livemint.com For the people of India and their “faith” in the Sardar Sarovar dam, it’s really a matter of public finance Optics is as air for politicians. It is no different for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and what is commonly known as the Narmada Dam. But even air can sometimes get dense with rhetoric. On 17 September, Modi inaugurated the Sardar Sarovar Dam, the largest project of the Narmada, or Sardar Sarovar Project,...

-Livemint.com Despite the construction sector being in the doldrums, personal housing was holding its own—till demonetisation Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to create 10 million jobs in five years while campaigning in the 2014 general election. After completing more than three years in office, has the government been able to deliver? We do not know for sure. Findings of a large-sample survey on employment, conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO),...