-Press release by Working Peoples' Charter dated 21st September, 2020 Amidst the micro and macro-economic crisis of the last 5 years, the union government has aggressively pushed the agenda of labour law reforms -- purportedly to simplify India’s ‘complex’ labour legislations, improve the business environment, and augment growth and employment. These changes, driven primarily by the business fraternity, have been aimed at improving India’s ranking in the ‘Ease of Doing Business’...

-Networkideas.org The GDP growth in the first quarter (April-June) of 2020 over the first quarter of the previous year has been minus 24 per cent according to preliminary official estimates. But most knowledgeable people believe that even this is an underestimate of the actual contraction brought about by the lockdown. In fact, a former chief statistician of India, Pronab Sen, believes that the actual contraction would have been about 32 per...

-The Hindu Business Line The government, market and collectives should have worked in tandem to develop resilience of economic institutions during the slowdown in India The sharp downfall in the economic growth rate could be attributable to a lack of resilience of Indian economy. Only fiscal and monetary policies may not halt the downfall of the economy. Collective organisations, including NGOs, have played an important role in consumption and income-smoothing. The downfall...

-ThePrint.in K-shaped recovery means the growing gap between ‘winners and losers’. An example in India is the stock market being healthy while millions have lost their jobs. Amidst the flood of commentary that followed the finding that the world’s fastest-growing large economy had become its fastest-shrinking one, an observation that stood out was that India’s growth potential had dropped from 6 per cent to 5 per cent. Now, it has been obvious...

Often exports made by a country to the rest of the world are seen in a positive light by us. It is because exports not only earn precious foreign currencies (that can be used for importing goods and services or simply be used for building forex reserves), it also helps in generating effective demand for goods and services produced in that country and hence, contributes to economic or GDP growth....