-ThePrint.in Greater formalisation will see a shift from low-paying, labour-intensive jobs in informal sector to more productive, formal-sector jobs. This could lead to disruption in short term. A report issued by the State Bank of India (SBI) last month estimated that India’s informal economy has shrunk to 15-20 percent of the GDP in 2020-21 from 52 percent in 2017-18. The report uses employment and digitisation to assess the extent of formalization in...

-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...

When one of the three farm laws i.e., The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020 was enacted last year, it was argued by its proponents that the legislation would allow the farmers to sell their produce (and the traders to purchase that produce) outside the Agricultural Produce Market Committee-APMC mandis after crop harvesting. In a way, that particular piece of legislation was enacted to end the...

-The Hindu The channels of communication between scientists and society remain limited Indian scientists engaged in science, contributing to the understanding of the natural world and developing approaches and technologies to measure or change outcomes well before the Scientific Revolution that began in Europe in 1543. Whether it was the more than two millennia-old Charaka Samhita or the Jantar Mantars of Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, science and technologywere embedded in the...

Media reports indicate that at the start of the southwest monsoon season, lightning strikes caused the death of over 70 people in the states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh on a single day i.e. 11th July, 2021. Prior to those separate events related to human casualty caused by thunderbolts, eighteen elephants were found dead on a hilltop at Kandali Proposed Reserve Forest situated in Assam's Nagaon district on...