-Review of Agrarian Studies In 2019, the National Statistical Office undertook India’s first-ever national time-use survey, the results of which have recently been published (GoI 2020). Time Use in India 2019 (henceforth, TUS19) provides information on time spent by men and women in rural and urban areas of all States in different activities during one full day. From such a survey, we should be able to gauge the time spent on...

The World Economic Outlook – a bi-annual publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -- released in October 2020 has anticipated that the economic progress made by the countries since the 1990s to reduce poverty would be turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of that, economic disparity would rise too in the post-COVID world because the crisis has disproportionately impacted women, informal sector workers and people with...

-Livemint.com A failure to protect incomes could widen the gap between have-nots and haves and thus hurt growth When the facts change, I change my mind," John Maynard Keynes is believed to have said almost a century ago. Responding to the economic after-shocks of the covid pandemic, governments and central banks have been living by this maxim. In the UK and US, supposedly fiscally conservative governments have spent with abandon to prop...

-CaravanMagazine.in In May 2020, 10 central trade unions jointly wrote twice to Guy Ryder, the director general of the International Labour Organisation, drawing attention to the plight of migrant workers during the COVID-19 crisis as well as the government’s dilution and suspension of labour laws. In May, several states—including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat—introduced sweeping changes in labour laws such as increasing the working hours from eight to 12. The...

-The Hindu The labour codes will only better India’s ‘ease of doing business’ ranking instead of improving conditions of employment In an interview with The Hindu in October this year, the Union Labour Minister claimed that the four labour codes would generate employment and secure the basic rights of the workers. He also claimed that the labour codes seek to universalise the right to minimum wage of workers and social security entitlements....