Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...

-Livemint.com From an already low base, women’s employment has fallen further, and a recovery will be difficult A clutch of early studies on the impact of the lockdown on employment is showing that women’s employment could be particularly badly hit. Given India’s record low female workforce participation rates, growing child care demands, and a looming recession, researchers fear that women could be increasingly shut out of the productive economy. To estimate the impact...

-Business Today Women who were employed before the lockdown were 23.5 percentage points less likely to be employed compared to men in the post-lockdown phase, says report Though coronavirus lockdown has impacted lakhs of Indians, a study shows that women are the worst hit when it comes to job prospects. The research paper published by Ashwini Deshpande, professor of economics at Ashoka University, claims that women who were employed before the lockdown...

-Scroll.in They observed that data unfavourable to the government was getting revised or suppressed on the basis of questionable methodologies. A group of economists and social scientists on Thursday urged the Indian government to restore the integrity of statistical organisations as their national and global reputation was “at stake”. Any data unfavourable to the government “seems to get revised or suppressed on the basis of some questionable methodology”, they said, citing some...

-PTI Being a strategic mineral resource, indigenous production can save the much-needed foreign exchange, in which laterites can play a significant role, like bauxite, which is mined from south Goa. Panaji (Goa): Iron ore reserves in Goa may exhaust in another 10 years and if there are too many companies involved in mining and the pace of excavation is high, the stocks may not even last for five years, an expert said...