-Hindustan Times According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, the number of the employed fell from 399.38 million in July to 397.78 million in August, with nearly 1.3 million job losses in rural India alone. Over 1.5 million people from both the formal and informal sectors lost their jobs in August, reversing some of the gains made in July, as the unemployment rate rose in rural and urban India. According to the...

Generally, economists refer to indicators like Worker Population Ratio (WPR), Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) and Unemployment Rate (UR) in order to assess the extent of joblessness and work related precarity at a particular period of time in a certain geographical area. However, there are other indicators too, which can help in understanding the job situation, livelihoods security and vulnerability of workers in a better way such as 'percentage distribution...

-Hindustan Times A corrosive culture distances the State from the public and legitimises demands for public ‘discipline’ to achieve policy goals Caught on a now viral video, ordering police to “break the heads” of farmer protesters, Haryana bureaucrat Ayush Sinha achieved notoriety last week. The incident, coupled with the Haryana chief minister (CM)’s condemnation of the “choice of words” while insisting on “strictness” to maintain law and order, speaks volumes for how...

-Hindustan Times The ₹12,000 crore Char Dham road project was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016 to connect Hindu shrines of Gangotri, Yamnotri, Badrinath and Kedarnth through a four lane all-weather road The all-weather Char Dham road in Uttarakhand has witnessed 25 major landslides this rainy season, forcing the administration to close two stretches of roads in Tehri Garwhal for indefinite periods and indicating that “unscientific” road construction was causing...

-Hindustan Times Afghanistan has been driving the dry fruit business in Khari Baoli, which is India’s biggest dry fruit market and home to some of the oldest dry fruit importers in the country. Surjeet Singh, a wholesale dry fruits trader, is watching the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan with great concern. “My business is completely dependent on Afghanistan; almost everything here is imported from there, ” says Singh, pointing to a range of dry...