-Livemint.com * Rural unemployment rate has been growing for the last couple of weeks despite rural economy opening up gradually * Economists believe despite the opening up of the economy, it will take time for unemployment situation to come back to the pre-covid time NEW DELHI: India’s Rural unemployment rate climbed to 25.09% in the week ended 24 May from 22.79% in the previous week, while urban unemployment rate declined by over four...

-Newsclick.in Additional funds for MSMEs and MGNREGA are going to create enough jobs, but the economy will remain in doldrums. There has been much mutual patting on the back and self-congratulation, after the Narendra Modi government announced two policy measures that could have a direct impact on job creation. These were: a special credit line of Rs.3 lakh crore for MSMEs (medium, small and micro enterprises) and an additional allocation of Rs.40,000...

After the outbreak of COVID-19 in China during early January this year and its dissemination globally within a few days, health experts have suggested ways to check its spread exponentially among the rest of the population. In the age of internet connectivity, work-from-home and self-isolation have been advised as solutions to ensure social distancing and avoid large-scale social gatherings. Experts have asked governments and private enterprises to keep people at...

-Down to Earth Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget has all the ingredients to deepen India’s farm crisis These are desperate times for India. Rural unemployment was at a 45-year-high while consumption expenditure of rural families fell 9 per cent between 2011-12 and 2017-18, according to a report by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), which the government never released but got leaked to the media in November 2019. Between 2011-12 and 2015-16, the income of farmers...

-Frontline.in The Budget lacks any serious effort to address the main issues of unemployment, agrarian distress and falling incomes, revealing a high level of official insensitivity. A Budget during a time of recession, increasing unemployment, agrarian distress, falling incomes, demand constraint and malnutrition would have done well to first acknowledge the mess that policies have created and then taken steps to provide employment, boost rural incomes, increase purchasing power and thereby demand. Coming...