-Livemint.com From an already low base, women’s employment has fallen further, and a recovery will be difficult A clutch of early studies on the impact of the lockdown on employment is showing that women’s employment could be particularly badly hit. Given India’s record low female workforce participation rates, growing child care demands, and a looming recession, researchers fear that women could be increasingly shut out of the productive economy. To estimate the impact...

-Society for Social and Economic Research Monograph 20/3 Key Messages Lack of planning and preparation by the Central government for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a massive blow to India’s economy and has caused enormous hardships to working people of the country. Harvesting of Rabi crops • Unplanned and sudden imposition of the lockdown resulted in a massive and unprecedented disruption to agricultural activities such as harvesting, sale of agricultural produce, and purchase...

-Hindustan Times The government has undermined secular democracy; social justice; federalism; and economic self-reliance Surreal is, perhaps, the only way to describe marking of the first anniversary of the Modi 2.0 government. As the government data detailing the pre-coronavirus disease destruction of the economy and the consequent ruination of crores of lives during the last year was being released, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi was writing to all of us describing the...

-The Telegraph 2019-20 economic growth tumbles to 4.2% India’s economic growth has tumbled to a 12-year low of 4.2 per cent in 2019-20. What is even worse is that this statistic barely reflects the impact of the coronavirus-induced lockdown, which has silenced the clangour in its factories for over two months. The lockdown began on March 25 — barely a week before the close of the financial year. “Due to a contraction in investment of...

-Hindustan Times According to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme website, around 3.5 million new job applications have come in the current financial year since April 1 till May 20. As many as 3.5 million new workers have sought jobs under MGNREGA since April 1, the highest number of applications in a decade, but there may not be enough work to engage them all, according to government data and officials...