-The Hindu The government seems to have prioritised meeting its fiscal deficit targets rather than using this opportunity to signal a path of employment-centred and inclusive growth India continues to rank poorly in various global indices that reflect the quality of life, human capital or human development in the country, such as the Human Development Index (rank 131 out of 189 countries) and the Global Hunger Index (rank 101 out of 116...

-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 Hindu Policy efforts to formalise the economy will have limited results as the bulk of informal units are petty producers Since 2016, the Government has made several efforts to formalise the economy. Currency demonetisation, introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), digitalisation of financial transactions and enrolment of informal sector workers on numerous government Internet portals are all meant to encourage the formalisation of the economy. But why the impetus...

-The Hindu An SBI Research study’s claim that there is greater formalisation of the economy is unfounded According to a recent State Bank of India (SBI) Research report, the Informal Economy in India has been shrinking since 2018. Formalisation, the report says, has taken place through the gross value-added (GVA) route, consumption through increased digital payments, and the employment route. Let’s examine each of these. The report claims that the share of the...

-Scroll.in The shock move devastated India’s Informal Economy. Many small businesses never recovered, as a supply chain at the intersection of diamonds and plastic shows. Up till 8.30 pm on the night of November 8, 2016, Muniram Yadav was blissfully unaware of the announcement that had shaken the country just thirty minutes before. He was engrossed in work, in a tiny workshop in Mumbai’s Sakinaka suburb, supervising four labourers as they carried...