-The Hindu The longer-term decline in the labour participation rate can be attributed to a host of factors The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted economies across the world and presented policymakers with the unenviable task of sustaining employment amidst lockdowns. However, the academic and political debates in India on unemployment, which is widely attributed to jobless Growth amidst stagnation in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, predate the pandemic. It will be useful to...

-Livemint.com India’s south and west are now at replacement fertility, but it will be several decades before the country’s population starts shrinking Gujarat has now joined 13 other states at or below replacement fertility, new data from the Sample Registration System (SRS) for 2018 shows. Bihar is now the only Indian state where a woman as of 2018 was likely to have over three children in her lifetime. The SRS is a large-scale...

-Hindustan Times Business leaders expect a normal monsoon, record sowing of summer crops, improved winter harvest and a raft of government measures to help farmers and boost rural incomes to boost demand for goods ranging from two-wheelers to tractors. Businesses are banking on a bumper harvest and high rural incomes to drive demand for goods after the coronavirus pandemic stunted Growth in the country’s cities, where most of the factories and offices...

-IndiaSpend.com Bengaluru: As India deals with growing numbers of COVID-19 cases and the economic ramifications of the resultant lockdowns, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government has made a slew of announcements and promulgated ordinances to revive the economy, including the agriculture sector. It brought in the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion & Facilitation) Ordinance 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance 2020, and amended the...

-Civil Society News As people pour into villages from cities in a desperate effort to get back home, the only work they can hope to get is under MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act). The rural employment scheme was designed to help people in distressful situations like a flood or drought so that they had something to fall back on when there was nothing else. Will it be able to...