-The Indian Express One year since the Covid-19 lockdown was imposed, there’s been little change in the hunger levels and unemployment rate among migrant workers, especially women. Today marks the first anniversary of the day the central government announced an ill-planned national lockdown. India is home to nearly 500 million informal sector workers with practically non-existent social security and the unilateral decision pushed them into perilous circumstances, triggering their great exodus from...

-IndiaSpend.com Latest data indicate a structural shift away from organised sector jobs towards more insecure self-employment or unorganised sector jobs, Mahesh Vyas of the Centre For Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) tells us in this interview Mumbai: "We have an ageing population. If we have shrinking employment in urban places, if the better educated graduates or postgraduates are the ones who are losing jobs, how can we recover the economy from the downslide...

-The Hindu With no urban equivalent to the NREGA as yet, there must be a focus on supporting new forms of employment With the Indian economy gradually finding its feet after a historic contraction of negative 23.9% in the April-June quarter, economic commentators have busied themselves with debating the need for fiscal expansion and the viability of a “V-shaped recovery”. These debates, however, have shifted focus away from the employment question, considered...

-Hindustan Times The average PE (price earnings) multiple of Sensex companies , which measures the price of a stock as a multiple of its earnings per share, has risen to 31.49 in the current month, the highest since 1998-99 . The BSE Sensex, India’s benchmark stock market index, reached an all-time high of 44,825 on Wednesday, November 25. There is reason to believe that speculation and external tailwinds, rather than strong fundamentals,...

-The Indian Express While much of the world is seeing benign inflation trends, India is a clear exception. Among the drivers of headline inflation in India in recent months has been food prices, especially those of vegetables. With economic activity picking pace after the easing of lockdown measures, the recovery has thrown up some paradoxes: revival in employment amid a fall in labour force participation, surging inflation rate despite disinflationary impact from...