-The Hindu The study calls for raising it to 1.6% to 2.2% of GDP The government expenditure in India on early childhood education (ECE) for children between the age of three years and six years is a mere 0.1% of the GDP, and the average spend per child of ₹8,297 per annum is at least a fourth of desired levels, according to a new study. The research conducted jointly by the Centre for...

-TheWire.in While employment was hit harder in urban areas due to the extent of disruption to urban business by the national lockdowns, rural India saw a more unequal distribution of these effects due to high discrimination. In the first article in this two-part series, we looked at the findings on discrimination in India’s labour market detailed in Oxfam’s India Discrimination Report 2022.  While that article detailed the extent of discrimination faced by Muslims,...

-Newsclick.in Three transformative steps could dramatically change this dire situation – provided Modi Govt. has the will to take them. Wage growth of households has declined from 8.2% in 2012-2016 to 5.7% in 2017-2021, according to a fresh study by a ratings agency. It will actually be even lower – around 1% - if inflation is taken into account. This slowing down of wage growth has happened in both rural and urban...

-The Hindu Q1 surge in private consumption not just a function of pent-up demand but also rising employment levels, it says Demand for work under the national rural employment guarantee scheme hit a two-year low in August, signalling that the recovering economy is creating more jobs in rural as well as urban India, the Union Finance Ministry said on Saturday.    India’s inflation, the Ministry said, is “in control” and expected to moderate...

-The Telegraph At present, India has 195 million households with ration cards (nearly 794 million people), lower than the beneficiaries we intended to target in 2013 Inordinate delays in carrying out the census exercise are depriving millions of Indians who rely on rations for their subsistence. The exclusion of the poorest from the public distribution system in the pre and post-pandemic years was first flagged by the economists, Jean Drèze and Reetika...