-The Hindu With no urban equivalent to the NREGA as yet, there must be a focus on supporting new forms of employment With the Indian economy gradually finding its feet after a historic contraction of negative 23.9% in the April-June quarter, economic commentators have busied themselves with debating the need for fiscal expansion and the viability of a “V-shaped recovery”. These debates, however, have shifted focus away from the employment question, considered...

-National Herald The numbers show that it has come to the rescue of India’s rural workforce as the country battles one of its worst phases of economic slowdown and unemployment Over 9 crore persons living in rural parts of the country found informal work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 2020 till October, a Right to Information (RTI) reply seen by NH has revealed. The rural workers...

-The Hindu It can be made workable if there is political will and fiscal resources As economies around the world struggle to recover from the double whammy of a pandemic and a lockdown, unemployment is soaring. In India, the land of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the promise of jobs and the politics of unemployment have a long history. Can a citizen demand work as a right, and...

-Financial Express The latest figure shows that the joblessness in the rural areas is now lower than the pre-pandemic levels. The unemployment rate in rural India significantly fell to 5.21 per cent in the last week, according to CMIE’s weekly employment data. The latest figure shows that the joblessness in the rural areas is now lower than the pre-pandemic levels. Though the rising number of jobs plays a major role in reducing...

-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...