-Livemint.com The BJP government, which came to power on the promise of creating 20 million jobs per year, has not yet recognized the gravity of the situation The Central Statistical Office (CSO) has released the full-year growth estimates for 2016-17. These had been much awaited given the uncertainty over the impact of demonetization. These were on expected lines, with fourth quarter growth in gross value added (GVA) in 2016-17 declining to 5.6%...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Heat trapped by tarred roads and dense clusters of buildings may have added nearly 2 degrees to temperatures in the world's most populated cities, including Calcutta, Delhi and Mumbai, over and above the effects of global warming, researchers said today. Their study, described as the first to quantify the combined impacts of global warming and the "urban heat island effect", suggests that the overheated cities will face double...

-The Hindu Greater data availability, especially on labour markets, needed to better gauge social impact of such policies The World Bank has said the social impact of demonetisation may have been greater as the informal economy was likely to have been hit especially hard. However, the Bank said the impact of demonetisation on the informal economy was difficult to measure and greater data availability, especially on labour markets, is needed to...

-Hindustan Times To begin with, it is imperative that the government and the ruling coalition acknowledge the challenge, and not be dismissive about it. Ambiguous expressions such as “promoting self-employment” do not help. It is difficult to disagree when BJP president Amit Shah says it’s impossible to provide jobs to everyone in a country of 1.25 billion people. It is also equally absurd to agree with him that reports of rising unemployment...

-Livemint.com A detailed look at Labour Bureau’s Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) methodology and design suggests that one shouldn’t read too much in these numbers New Delhi: Opposition parties and many commentators have been citing the Labour Bureau’s Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) numbers to attack the government over failure to generate employment). How credible are such claims? A detailed look at QES methodology and design suggests that one shouldn’t read too much in...