-The Telegraph The Union budget is an embodiment of unequal fiscal policy The finance minister and her ministry have betrayed, once again, their lack of understanding of the Indian economy or the conditions under which most Indians are living today. Despite attempts to ‘talk up’ the supposed recovery, the economy is weak and most people are hurting. India has seen one of the biggest increases in the number of poor and hungry people...

-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...

-TheWire.in A claim of an 8.4% real GDP growth rate has little relevance even as rural India battles plummeting wage levels, depleted incomes and widespread unemployment. With the release of the GDP figures for the quarter ending September, the government machinery has been in full swing advancing the narrative that economic growth is indeed back on track. However, sorely missing from these narratives is the inconvenient factoid on the currently dismal state of...

-The Telegraph The Centre’s efforts to introduce reformist laws to reinvigorate the business ecosystem can often be stymied by the states through regressive legislation Labour reform in India has always been a prickly subject and any attempt to amend legislation sparks outrage and resentment among one or the other group of stakeholders in the economy. When the Narendra Modi government crunched 29 Central laws into four labour codes last year, India Inc...

-The Telegraph The latest unemployment rate is similar to the post-lockdown figure of 8.35 per cent recorded by the research firm around this time last year Nearly 19 lakh people lost jobs in August with the manufacturing sector the worst affected, according to the latest employment data released by a private research firm. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) figures show that the unemployment rate had climbed to 8.32 per cent in...