-The Hindu Strengthening the MGNREGA would be more prudent than a targeted cash transfer plan like PM-KISAN Rural distress has hit unprecedented levels. According to news reports, unemployment is the highest in 45 years. To allay some misgivings of the distress, one of the announcements in the Budget speech was that “vulnerable landholding farmer families, having cultivable land up to 2 hectares, will be provided direct income support at the rate of...

-The Telegraph Setting the record straight on the Narendra Modi establishment’s pervasive data-twisting Post truth. This seems to be the only surviving truth in today’s India, a country overrun with bare-faced lies, falsehood, deceit and invented truths — statistics. Note the brazen manner in which the chief of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, Bibek Debroy, declared recently that a new national sample survey will be conducted by the government to...

-Press release by NREGA Watch (Jharkhand) dated 2nd February, 2019 Thousands of NREGA workers across Jharkhand spilled to the streets today to express their anger at the continued denial of their entitlements. In over 30 blocks of the state, workers raised their voice against the abysmal wage rate, acute shortage of work, increasing delays in payment of wages, and violation of several other rights. They also demanded work and submitted grievances...

-The Hindu Labour Minister replies to Parliament New Delhi: There is no data available on unemployment subsequent to the period of demonetisation, Labour Minister Santosh Gangwar told Parliament on Monday, in a written response to a question in the Lok Sabha. More than a third of the questions asked by Members of Parliament to the Labour Ministry on Monday were related to unemployment data. The Ministry held firmly to citing Labour Bureau surveys...

-Scroll.in This is not just about low job creation but also about the worsening quality of jobs, says Himanshu, associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. On Thursday, a political storm boiled over after Business Standard reported that, between 2017-’18, unemployment numbers in India reached a 45-year high. The newspaper based its report on a survey, conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation, called the Periodic Labour Force Survey that the government had...