Contrary to the rising economic distress on the ground since the last few years, the official press release related to the fourth Annual Report on the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) at first glance seems to give a rosy picture about the employment situation in India.  Defined as the percentage of persons unemployed among the persons in the labour force, the unemployment rate in usual status (principal activity status + subsidiary economic activity status)...

-Siasat.com New Delhi: An online/offline lecture on “Challenges faced by Minorities in the Current World Scenario, focusing on Indian Muslims” was organised by the Institute of Objective Studies on September 4. The event was organised to mark the occasion of the Institute’s 36th Annual General Assembly meeting. The lecture was delivered by Prof. Amitabh Kundu, the professor emeritus, LJ University, Ahmedabad, and a distinguished fellow at the Research and Information System for...

-The Telegraph At present, India has 195 million households with ration cards (nearly 794 million people), lower than the beneficiaries we intended to target in 2013 Inordinate delays in carrying out the census exercise are depriving millions of Indians who rely on rations for their subsistence. The exclusion of the poorest from the public distribution system in the pre and post-pandemic years was first flagged by the economists, Jean Drèze and Reetika...

-Press release by Oxfam India dated 15 September 2022 New Delhi: Oxfam India’s latest ‘India Discrimination Report 2022’ finds women in India despite their same educational qualification and work experience as men will be discriminated in the labour market due to societal and employers’ prejudices. The academically recognised statistical model applied in the India Discrimination Report is now able to quantify the discrimination women face in the labour market. The lower...

-The Telegraph Sanjay Mohanty, professor of population health at International Institute of Population Sciences, says steady fall in total health spending in proportion to GDP is 'worrying' India’s per capita healthcare expenditure at constant prices has remained near-stagnant despite increases in government spending and decreases in household spending on healthcare over a six-year period, the latest national health accounts report has shown. India’s per capita total healthcare expenditure has changed little over that...