Fifty thousand jobs? The U.S. economy has lost that many every week, on average, for a straight 140 weeks since December 2007. Now that the media's gush and drool over the Obama visit has run dry — thanks to other far more interesting events — it might be worth looking at a couple of ‘outcomes' that much of our media seemed pretty taken with.‘Twenty deals worth 10 billion dollars that create...

A lot has been said and written about the visit of Barack Obama, the President of USA to India. The corporate media was in the usual over-enthusiastic drive to bring to its readers and viewers all minute details about his visit from where he stayed and what he ate to how many warships, planes and cars accompanied him and how a whopping $200 million was spent per day for the...

Some people feel agriculture in India provides employment much beyond its capacity — that is, the number of people working on the farm is many times the actual requirement. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is among the proponents of this view. In his interaction with a group of editors last month, Singh said, “The only way we can raise our heads above poverty is for more people to be taken out of...

In most countries, unemployment is a clean-cut, easily understandable — and identifiable — problem. In India, it’s not that simple. The complexity of our economy, the barbed-wire fence of restrictions that surround our “organised” sector, the tendency towards seasonal work, and the networks of caste, clan and kinship that still govern employment in many parts make answering the simple question “How many of India’s workers are unemployed?” very difficult indeed. The labour ministry...

With an eye on projected 2.5 per cent annual growth in the job sector, the government is in the process of giving final touches to a national policy to accelerate employment growth. The draft of the proposed National Employment Policy is likely to be placed before the Cabinet soon for its approval. In a statement, the Labour and Employment Ministry said the draft note has already been prepared. It was...