-The Indian Express As we grapple with a health, economic and humanitarian crisis of epic proportions, the immediate need is to provide emergency relief to cushion the effects of the dual shocks of the virus and lockdown on informal workers. COVID-19 is causing havoc across the world, destroying both lives and livelihoods. Developing countries such as India are particularly vulnerable as their vast informal workforce, which has no labour, social or health...

After the outbreak of COVID-19 in China during early January this year and its dissemination globally within a few days, health experts have suggested ways to check its spread exponentially among the rest of the population. In the age of internet connectivity, work-from-home and self-isolation have been advised as solutions to ensure social distancing and avoid large-scale social gatherings. Experts have asked governments and private enterprises to keep people at...

-The Indian Express The “total employment during 2011-12 and 2017-18 declined by 9 million”. Also,close to 2.6 million jobs were lost every year between 2011-12 and 2017-18. A NEW academic paper — written by Santosh Mehrotra and Jajati K Parida and published by the Centre of Sustainable Employment at the Azim Premji University on Thursday — has formally concluded that the total employment in India declined between 2011-12 and 2017-18. This is...

-The Hindu Business Line Women are burdened with much of the care work, which is generally unregulated and poorly paid. This must change Care work has been the focus of policy debates after the International Labour Organization (ILO) published a report titled ‘Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work’ in 2018. The ILO observed that care work involves a range of skills that are often not formally recognised...

-The Telegraph More than half of the country's small and marginal farmers continue to be left out of the ambit of formal finance A recent report by the Reserve Bank of India found that despite a plethora of schemes aimed at financial inclusion, only 40.9 per cent of small and marginal farmers have so far been covered by the banking system. Small and marginal farmers are defined as those with operational land...