-The Hindu Employment opportunities, formal jobs and the Labour force are all shrinking The jobs situation in India does not reflect a crisis, but it is a matter of serious concern. A crisis is understood as an emergency that demands immediate attention, without which we could see a calamity of sorts. There is no immediate calamity of any kind on hand. But there is a deeply insidious problem at work in the...

-Frontline.in Hidden in the Modi government’s Budget promises to India’s farmers, who are in distress, is the admission: we have failed you. No section of society has perhaps fared worse under the Narendra Modi regime than small peasants and agricultural Labourers. Rural India, particularly peasants, voted in large numbers for the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 2014. Once in power, the NDA government promised to double the incomes...

-The Hindu India has no industrial policy or employment strategy to ride the wave of its demographic dividend Job creation has slowed since 2011-12, the year of the last published National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) Labour force survey. I used Labour Bureau annual survey (2015-16) data and Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt. Ltd. (CMIE) data (post-2016), which has a sample size larger than the NSSO Labour force surveys, to reach this...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Thinking beyond “rain basera”, the ordinary shelters for the homeless, Delhi government is now working on a proposal to set up working men’s hostels. Though at a conceptual stage, the hostels would provide dedicated beds to the working class in a dormitory with the provision of a community kitchen and recreational activities at a monthly rent of up to Rs 1,000, said sources. The hostels would be...

-The Hindu There needs to be robust infrastructure for official statistics so that governments do not suppress inconvenient truths Over the past two weeks, headlines have focussed on declining employment between 2011-12 and 2016-17; loss of jobs under the National Democratic Alliance government, particularly post-demonetisation; and the government’s refusal to release a report using the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) documenting this decline, leading to resignations of two members of the National...