-TheWire.in The ‘vikas’ train has begun to chug the wrong way, as it were. A worrisome aspect of the Indian economy is reflected in the share of employment in agriculture dramatically rising from 42.5% of the total employed in 2018-19 to 45.6% in 2019-20. This may signify an unusually large movement of labour from industry or services sectors to agriculture. The total number of persons employed in India varies between 400 million and...

The recently released quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data broadly confirms the dip in employment and jobs during the countrywide lockdown period, followed by a certain degree of recovery in the post-lockdown months last year as have been indicated by various survey-based studies and research papers. The quarterly bulletin on PLFS provides data on key employment and unemployment indicators i.e. Unemployment Rate (UR), Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and Labour...

-CaravanMagazine.in ASHA workers demand hikes, regularisation and health insurance amid COVID-19 An ASHA—accredited social health activist—is a community-health worker, instituted by the union ministry of health and family welfare as a part of India's National Rural Health Mission. The ASHAs were primarily meant to help rural and semi-urban communities gain access to health-related services. According to the health ministry's recent data, there are at least 10,22,265 ASHAs in the country. During the...

-ThePrint.in ISEC Bangalore researchers studied NFHS data to find that out-of-pocket expenditure for a normal delivery at a public facility is higher for rural households (Rs 5,368) than urban (Rs 4,330). Maternal and child healthcare services in India – including antenatal care, natal care (institutional delivery, or births delivered in a medical facility), postnatal care, and childcare – are meant to be free of cost in public health facilities. Several policies and...

-The Hindu The case for reservations for women and transgender persons in State jobs and higher education The Bihar government recently announced 33% horizontal reservation for women in State engineering and medical colleges. While reservation for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) is referred to as vertical reservation, horizontal reservation refers to the equal opportunity provided to other categories of beneficiaries, such as...