The recently released quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data broadly confirms the dip in employment and jobs during the countrywide lockdown period, followed by a certain degree of recovery in the post-lockdown months last year as have been indicated by various survey-based studies and research papers. The quarterly bulletin on PLFS provides data on key employment and unemployment indicators i.e. Unemployment Rate (UR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and Labour...

-Newsclick.in Besides the dire jobs situation, what is even more distressing is falling income from surviving jobs. People in India are in the grip of a severe income crisis brought on by myopic government policies and aggravated by mismanagement of the pandemic. Part of this economic collapse is because the absolute number of jobs has shrunk. Another part – not much talked about – is because of low incomes from existing jobs. This...

-ThePrint.in Prashnam's 12-state survey shows a general lack of awareness. But among those who know what Pegasus is, a greater percentage say Modi government snoops on ordinary citizens. The Pegasus scandal has rocked India’s Parliament. The issue of Israeli spyware allegedly used for snooping on thousands of private citizens has been making headlines for the past two weeks across the world and in some sections of the Indian media. Reports continue to...

-TheWire.in Despite the state’s achievements in the education sector, the poor socio-political condition of marginalised groups keeps them out of the mainstream, with the pandemic making the situation worse. The 2021 Kerala Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) examinations recorded an all-time high pass percentage of 99.47% compared to earlier years. Although this calls for celebrations, a scrutiny of the results shows that students from the state’s tribal communities performed proportionately poorly. This...

The pandemic's first wave had a devastating impact on the livelihoods of rural workers in Bihar (including the self-employed) last year, according to a survey based research, jointly done by economists from Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability at Monash University, Australia and the New Delhi-based Institute for Human Development. A recent press note issued by the authors of the study shows that almost 94.4 percent of the households participating...