-The Hindu Trust in official statistics is vital for democracy — the new policy must avoid centralisation David Spiegelhalter, president of Royal Statistical Society in the U.K., gave a most unusual presidential address in 2017. Instead of talking about esoteric statistical techniques, he talked about declining trust in numbers in a post-truth society bombarded by fake news and alternative facts. He recommended to the statistical community that the best way of inspiring...

-The Indian Express Multiple data sets confirm sluggish pace of employment creation. Paucity of data can no longer be an excuse for the lack of debate. Jobs are an integral part of India’s political narrative today. This is unsurprising because the NDA came to power on the promise of creating a large number of jobs for India’s rapidly rising work force. However, much of the debate on employment performance over the last...

-Newsclick.in The falling work participation rate shows that the economy is in deep crisis. Various other economic indicators show this as well. In a stark and chilling confirmation of what the whole country has known for some time, a govt. report shows that Indian workforce (those actually working) declined from about 54% of the working age population in 2011-12 to 51% in 2015-16. While the working age population increased by 2.9% per...

-Livemint.com Increasing mechanization and stagnant wages might be behind youth unrest in poll-bound Gujarat As Gujarat prepares for assembly polls scheduled at the end of this year, the big question is whether the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would be able to retain the support which Narendra Modi’s leadership guaranteed. The Hardik Patel-led Patidar agitation and Jignesh Mevani-led Dalit protests point towards rising discontent among a section of the youth in the...

-GoIMonitor.com Unemployment, irregular jobs and low salaries continue to hurt India while it continues to embrace labour reforms PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi pitched for greater use of technology through an unusual equation ‘IT+IT= IT’ which had Internet in splits and Twitterartis trending #pinksliprevolution to underscore the impending layoffs in India’s famed IT sector. But the country’s unemployment saga lies far beyond the glass towers and high figure pay cheques. Around 77 per...