-The Indian Express Decentralised industrialisation, entrepreneurship from below have been absent in states that have seen recent unrest among agrarian communities. “The soil here is very saline with electrical conductivity value of 9. We can grow only chloride-loving crops like coconut and the MR-2 variety of mulberry.” That was Tamil Selvi, recently telling this correspondent about the 5.75-acre land farmed by her father Natarajan Gounder at Velayuthagoundanpudur, a small village around 25...

-Outlook Deputy director, ILO Decent Work Team for South Asia and Country Office for India, Sher Singh Verick on India’s high but “jobless” growth mystery Sher Singh Verick, deputy director, ILO Decent Work Team for South Asia and Country Office for India, strives to unr­avel India’s high but “jobless” growth mystery. Excerpts from an e-mail interview: * On high growth, low jobs Economic growth through investment, consumption and exports generally res­ults in more jobs,...

-The Hindu The pursuit of full employment of labour cannot primarily rely on domestic private investment, much less FDI. Only public investment will steady us in the long run. We are increasingly told that the inflow of capital — particularly the foreign direct investment (FDI) variety — increases employment levels and contributes to economic growth. In a rare interview given to The Wall Street Journal in May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reinforced...

-The Indian Express In the industrial areas of the National Capital Region, life is tied to the assembly line. But even if rarely, workers clear a space for that which seems impossible: thought and contemplation, and even the artistic life. When the whir of engines and the clang of metal against obstinate metal die down, when the neon lights go down in hundreds of sooty factory buildings in Haiderpur, Ashish Kumar opens...

-TheGuardian.com Hardworking women in India care for family members, cook, clean, garden, sew and farm without getting paid. When will official statistics recognise this? Women’s participation in work is an indicator of their status in a society. Paid work offers more opportunities for women’s agency, mobility and empowerment, and it usually leads to greater social recognition of the work that women do, whether paid or unpaid. Where women’s work participation rates are relatively...