The recently released quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data broadly confirms the dip in employment and jobs during the countrywide lockdown period, followed by a certain degree of recovery in the post-lockdown months last year as have been indicated by various survey-based studies and research papers. The quarterly bulletin on PLFS provides data on key employment and unemployment indicators i.e. Unemployment Rate (UR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and Labour...

The pandemic's first wave had a devastating impact on the livelihoods of rural workers in Bihar (including the self-employed) last year, according to a survey based research, jointly done by economists from Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability at Monash University, Australia and the New Delhi-based Institute for Human Development. A recent press note issued by the authors of the study shows that almost 94.4 percent of the households participating...

-The Hindu Unless policy action ensures higher demand and growth, India will continue on the path of a K-shaped recovery In recent times, right-leaning economists have been arguing that the Government does not need to do anything with the economy and that it will revive by itself. They call those who disagree with them, doomsday merchants. These economists reason that, like after the Great Depression, the economy rebounded worldwide, and so will...

-The Telegraph Madan B. Lokur expresses doubt whether a clause and a law dealing with sedition and terrorism would be scrapped altogether Justice Madan B. Lokur, the former Supreme Court judge, has expressed doubt whether a clause and a law dealing with sedition and terrorism would be scrapped altogether but has suggested measures to insulate them from misuse. Several former Supreme Court judges and a former high court judge on Saturday called the...

-Macroscan.com/ Livemint.com There is a common trope, fed especially to generations born after 1991, that economic progress and modernization in India really occurred only after ‘liberalizing’ economic reforms were introduced three decades ago. This is a travesty of the truth. Certainly, conditions for most Indians have improved since that watershed year. Per capita income went up more rapidly than before, life expectancy went up, infant and maternal mortality decreased, income poverty...