-TheQuint.com A recent SBI report, which states that the informal economy has declined, avoids even defining ‘informal economy’. A recent edition of “Ecowrap”, a publication of the research team of the State Bank of India (SBI), has claimed that India’s informal economy has sharply declined from 52.4 per cent in 2017-18 to between 15 and 20 per cent in 2020-21 in the three years since 2017-18. This finding by the SBI research...

-ThePrint.in Greater formalisation will see a shift from low-paying, labour-intensive jobs in informal sector to more productive, formal-sector jobs. This could lead to disruption in short term. A report issued by the State Bank of India (SBI) last month estimated that India’s informal economy has shrunk to 15-20 percent of the GDP in 2020-21 from 52 percent in 2017-18. The report uses employment and digitisation to assess the extent of formalization in...

-The Hindu Informal workers continue to bear the brunt of pandemic’s adverse effects, says SBI report Signalling a greater shift towards formalisation of the economy, the share of the large informal sector in overall economic activity dipped sharply in 2020-21 even as informal workers continue to bear the brunt of the pandemic’s adverse effects, the SBI said in a research report. Concluding that the share of the informal economy may have shrunk to...

-Hindustan Times Workers who have registered so far belong to diverse occupations, such as construction, apparel manufacturing, fishing, gig and platform work, street vending as well as domestic work. Nearly half of 40 million workers of the country’s informal economy registered on a recently launched national portal are women, and most workers regardless of gender are from disadvantaged castes, official data that shines new light on India’s invisible unorganised labour force shows. Trends...

-Down to Earth There are prominent shortcomings in implementation, especially registration of workers and and collection and distribution of Cess The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic had widespread and devastating consequences to communities and enterprises in India and across the globe. However, the situation was particularly grim for the 453.6 million internal migrants in India, evidenced by the unprecedented ‘reverse migration’ witnessed during the pandemic.  Their vulnerabilities were exacerbated by the fact a...