-The Indian Express Indian statistical system can withstand political pressures. Legislation and public scrutiny can strengthen it further. One unfortunate fallout of the recent controversy regarding the non-publication of the Labour Force survey report by the National Sample Survey Organisation has been the questions raised on the autonomy and independence of the Indian official statistical system. As reported in this newspaper, the possibility of junking the survey report in favour of...

-The Hindu A basic income scheme will deliver benefits to the poor only if it comes on top of public services The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) is gaining ground globally. It has supporters among the political left and right, and among proponents as well as opponents of the free-market economy. A UBI requires the government to pay every citizen a fixed amount of money on a regular basis and...

-The Hindu Jaipur: As part of a nationwide campaign, representatives of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) Sangharsh Morcha and the Rajasthan Unorganised Labour Union on Thursday filed complaints for registration of First Information Reports (FIR) in more than 10 police stations in five districts of the State for non-payment of wages to labourers engaged under the Centre's flagship scheme. The complainants said that the government’s failure to pay wages and...

-The Hindu The Labour Bureau has completed its survey on employment generated by the MUDRA loan scheme, giving the Centre a potential data tool to combat other reports showing a dismal scenario on jobs. “We have completed the survey and submitted the report to the Labour Ministry,” said a senior Labour Bureau official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It is awaiting the Minister’s approval now… it is likely to be released in...

-The Hindu The Labour Force may have actually shrunk while the Modi government has been in office Attuned as we have become to political grandstanding on the purpose of democracy, we may not have imagined that something so prosaic as statistics can alter our perception of how it is actually working for us. The emergence over the past few months of data on employment, speaking precisely the lack of it, cannot but...