-The Telegraph 32.6% of the 18.1 million jobs in the country were lost in four months India witnessed the erosion of nearly a third of its white-collar jobs between May and August, with professionals like software engineers, teachers, accountants and analysts taking the biggest hit, a survey by a data agency has shown. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy has found that 5.9 million (32.6 per cent) of the 18.1 million white-collar jobs...

-The Telegraph Survey by Indian School of Business in Jharkhand reveals mass deletion of genuine job cards during linkage India’s economy is going through an unprecedented crisis of unemployment. In these times, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme and other welfare programmes are beacons of hope for India’s large rural population. However, the delivery of welfare has traditionally suffered from leakages. Thus, in 2015-16, the Government of India started linking...

-The Indian Express According to officials, this is a big shift in the work demand process—separating demand generating and implementing agencies—and is likely to change the way MGNREGA functions in the state. In what the Jharkhand government says is the first such move by any state, the Rural Development Ministry has started capturing work demand under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) through its social audit unit (SAU), generating nearly...

-The Indian Express While the over 3% agriculture growth in the first quarter factored in strong Rabi procurement, with high-price realisations getting reflected in the output numbers, fresh data from mandis indicate a slide in the prices of the intercrop produce — horticulture, milk and poultry etc. The rural sector may have held out the only sliver of hope amid the broader collapse in the first-quarter GDP numbers but there are fresh...

-The Hindu The crisis in agriculture demands that the government announce a strong fiscal stimulus for the rural economy A rather confident statement heard in the midst of India’s COVID-19-induced economic slowdown is this: “Agriculture will lead India’s economic revival”. But how valid is this claim put forward by government spokespersons and some observers? Four major arguments are offered. First, India’s food grain production in 2019-20 was 3.7% higher than in 2018-19. The...