Contrary to the rising economic distress on the ground since the last few years, the official press release related to the fourth Annual Report on the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) at first glance seems to give a rosy picture about the employment situation in India.  Defined as the percentage of persons unemployed among the persons in the labour force, the unemployment rate in usual status (principal activity status + subsidiary economic activity status)...

-Newslaundry.com The finance minister asked a valid question. Here’s the answer. Last Tuesday, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman asked India’s corporate honchos why they were not investing in the Indian economy. “I want to hear from India Inc,” she said, “what’s stopping you when countries and industries abroad think this is the place to be.” This is a valid question. In this piece, we will try and piece together why India Inc, as corporate India...

-The Telegraph Number of girls born per 1,000 boys improves by three points from an average 904 in 2017-19 to 907 in (the partly overlapping period of) 2018-20 India’s latest population sample registration survey has shown improvements in child mortality and the average sex ratio at birth. But that ratio — a possible indicator of pre-natal sex determination and sex-selective abortions — has declined in 10 states, including Bengal. The Union health ministry, releasing...

-The Telegraph The women’s labour force participation rate, which measures the proportion of women in the age group of 15 to 64 who are working or are actively seeking work, has been estimated to be 25.1 per cent India Discrimination Report 2022 has been recently published by Oxfam. The data used in this report are drawn from the National Sample Survey, Periodic Labour Force Survey, and the All India Debt and Investment...

-The Telegraph At present, India has 195 million households with ration cards (nearly 794 million people), lower than the beneficiaries we intended to target in 2013 Inordinate delays in carrying out the census exercise are depriving millions of Indians who rely on rations for their subsistence. The exclusion of the poorest from the public distribution system in the pre and post-pandemic years was first flagged by the economists, Jean Drèze and Reetika...