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)...

-The Hindu Frontline The story of Manuguru in eastern Telangana tells us how this sleight of hand is worked. Manuguru, a small town in eastern Telangana, set a record in April 2022 collecting Rs.1.59 crore in property taxes. It even made it to the list of TOP performing municipalities in the State by achieving more than 95 per cent of its annual property tax collection target. However, the fact is that Manuguru,...

-The Hindu The affidavit goes against the 2011 recommendation of National Commission for Scheduled Castes With the Supreme Court awaiting the Union government’s present position on including Dalit Christians as members of Scheduled Castes (SCs), the Narendra Modi government’s latest standing on this aspect has been to reject any such proposition, according to an affidavit filed by the government in November 2019, which also said Dalits who converted to Buddhism could not...

-United Nations News  From heart disease to cancer and diabetes, noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) now outnumber infectious diseases as the “TOP killers globally,” the UN health agency said in a new report, released on Wednesday, with one person under 70 dying every two seconds from an NCD. The report and new data portal, was launched on the sidelines of the 77th session of the General Assembly, at an event co-organized by the World...

It is hard for the media to ignore the findings of global Human Development Report (HDR) whenever a newer and updated version is released. Every time when the HDR is published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), media persons and commentators tend to compare the performance of their respective countries with that of performance in previous years as also with respect to the relative performance of other nations. One of...