Initial media reports suggest how timely interventions by various official agencies in Odisha prevented loss of human lives when Cyclone Fani hit that state on 3rd May. However, it is essential to also take into account recent official reports by different agencies, which indicate that the impact of the cyclone has been quite severe. A situation assessment report on the impact of Fani cyclone dated 15th May, 2019, which was released...

-The Hindu More than a ‘more jobs’ approach, addressing structural issues which keep women away from the workforce is a must India is in the middle of a historical election which is noteworthy in many respects, one of them being the unprecedented focus on women’s employment. The major national parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, have reached out to women, and their respective manifestos talk of measures to create more...

-Livemint.com Contrary to the assumption that the middle class is an urban phenomenon, a considerable segment of the Indian middle class resides in rural areas, finds a new study The size of the Indian middle class has always been at the heart of the narrative around India’s economic development. And yet the term middle class remains arbitrarily defined with estimates of its size and characteristics varying significantly based on subjective notions of...

-The Hindu If it’s the government’s case that NSSO figures are suspect, what has it based policy decisions on? Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri said last week, “we definitely have a data crisis,” and blamed academics for creating a “false narrative”. Yet, at the heart of the data crisis in India is the Central government, which has been holding back important data. Most recently, it did...

-The Indian Express Interestingly, researchers observed that as much as 5 million people left the workforce between 2016 and 2018. "The beginning of the decline in jobs coincided with demonetisation in November 2016, although no direct causal relationship can be established based only on these trends," The State of Working India (SWI) 2019 report released by Azim Premji University says. Bengaluru: Researchers and economists of Azim Premji University, based in Bangalore,...