-The Hindu Nearly 120 senior officers reshuffled just hours ahead of Cabinet expansion The day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi rejigged the Union Ministerial Council, there was another major reshuffle under the administrative watch of an outgoing minister — in a statutory body tasked with managing lakhs of crores of rupees. Nearly 120 top officials in the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) that oversees the retirement savings of India’s formal Workforce, were transferred...

-Livemint.com The aim is to enrol nearly 380 mn Workers and provide them benefits during times of distress The Union government will roll out the unorganized sector database by the end of July to enrol almost 380 million Workers, weeks after the Supreme Court rapped the labour ministry, saying that it showed “unpardonable" apathy towards Workers in the informal sector. The development comes more than a year after the mass reverse migration of...

-Livemint.com The lack of jobs is forcing many people to stop looking for one and thus drop out of the Workforce. Here’s the good news first. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), the unemployment rate for June 2021 fell to 9.17%. It was at 11.9% in May. The following chart plots the unemployment rate since January 2016, the period for which this data is available. As can be seen from...

-IndiaSpend.com Knowing whether Covid-19 can be transmitted through faeces or through virus-laden particles released via sewage is important for India where many still defecate in the open and most sewage is released untreated. Delhi: Faeces of Covid-19 patients contain the virus, sometimes even days after the person tests negative on a Covid-19 swab test. But researchers have been unable to confirm whether the virus could transmit through faeces. We look at the...

The recent Supreme Court of India’s judgments (please click here and here) related to ensuring food security of the migrant and unorganised sector Workers through the provision of dry ration, running of community kitchens and proper implementation of the 'One Nation One Ration Card' scheme should come as no surprise to us. A recent review of some of the robust studies, which relied on multi-state surveys (or reference surveys), having...