-Financial Express Dataset and methodological weaknesses cast doubt on recent poverty estimates that claim drastic reduction Bhalla, Bhasin and Virmani in a working paper (IMF), claimed India’s poverty, per a $1.9 per person per day poverty line (at PPP), was 0.9% of the population in 2020. Thanks to government transfer of free rations of 5 kg per person month, it fell to 0.8% (from 0.9% in 2019). Roy and de Velt, for...

A recently released study, which has been done by Dalberg in collaboration with Kantar, and with support from the Omidyar Network India, brings to light both the supply and demand-side perspectives on the 'One Nation One Ration Card' (ONORC) scheme. Titled 'Fulfilling the promise of One Nation One Ration Card: A frontline perspective from 5 Indian states', the survey for the study was conducted in five states i.e., Andhra Pradesh,...

-Deccan Herald Improving Workforce Participation Unemployment at 7.9%! Many may wonder why so much is made of a ratio that has been hovering between 6% and 8% since 2017. In India, when 7% lose their jobs, it means more than 40 million are without work. In December 2021, the CMIE informed us that 53 million Indians were unemployed. Assuming that each individual supports at least four other dependents in the household, it...

-The Hindu The trends in employment have not shown any clear and consistent patterns over the years The two important indicators of structural transformation in any economy are rates of growth and changes in the structural composition of output and the workforce. India has experienced fairly consistent changes in the first indicator, especially after the 1991 reforms, but the trend in employment has not revealed any consistent or clear pattern. The growth rate...

The increase in the total number of suicides committed in India during 2020 in comparison to the previous years has hit the headlines recently. While some media commentators have stated that the economic distress (caused by job loss, income loss, failure of business, and growing hunger, among other things) in 2020 could have led to more suicides being committed, others have said that home isolation and deteriorating mental health (associated...