-The Hindu Policy efforts to formalise the economy will have limited results as the bulk of informal units are petty producers Since 2016, the Government has made several efforts to formalise the economy. Currency demonetisation, introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), digitalisation of financial transactions and enrolment of informal sector workers on numerous government Internet portals are all meant to encourage the formalisation of the economy. But why the impetus...

-The Hindu It allows employers to extend unlimited advances to workers and charge an unspecified interest rate on such loans Debt bondage is a form of slavery that exists when a worker is induced to accept advances on wages, of a size, or at a level of interest, such that the advance will never be repaid. One of India’s hastily-passed Labour Codes — the Code on Wages, 2019 — gives legal sanction...

-The Hindu An SBI Research study’s claim that there is greater formalisation of the economy is unfounded According to a recent State Bank of India (SBI) Research report, the informal economy in India has been shrinking since 2018. Formalisation, the report says, has taken place through the gross value-added (GVA) route, consumption through increased digital payments, and the employment route. Let’s examine each of these. The report claims that the share of the...

-Scroll.in The shock move devastated India’s informal economy. Many small businesses never recovered, as a supply chain at the intersection of diamonds and plastic shows. Up till 8.30 pm on the night of November 8, 2016, Muniram Yadav was blissfully unaware of the announcement that had shaken the country just thirty minutes before. He was engrossed in work, in a tiny workshop in Mumbai’s Sakinaka suburb, supervising four labourers as they carried...

-The Hindu Informal Workers continue to bear the brunt of pandemic’s adverse effects, says SBI report Signalling a greater shift towards formalisation of the economy, the share of the large informal sector in overall economic activity dipped sharply in 2020-21 even as Informal Workers continue to bear the brunt of the pandemic’s adverse effects, the SBI said in a research report. Concluding that the share of the informal economy may have shrunk to...