-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...

-The Hindu Business Line The expanded ambit now allows a larger pool of enterprises to get the benefits of the MSME Act and pandemic-induced reforms Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are amongst the strongest Drivers of the economy with a vast network of about six crore enterprises, contributing about 45 per cent to manufacturing output, 50 per cent to exports, around 30 per cent to GDP, and creating employment for about...

-The Hindu The new labour codes do little to provide better pay and definitive rights to platform workers The new Code on Social Security allows a platform worker to be defined by their vulnerability — not their labour, nor the vulnerabilities of platform work. Swiggy workers have been essential during the pandemic. Even so, they have faced a continuous dip in pay and no rewards for being essential workers. During the last six...

-Down to Earth Freshwater wildlife down 84%; Latin America, the Caribbean particularly hit The population of vertebrate species declined by around 68 per cent between 1970 and 2016, said the Living Planet Report 2020 released by international non-profit World Wide Fund for Nature September 10, 2020. The Living Planet Index (LPI) — a measure of the state of the world’s biological diversity based on population trends of vertebrate species in terrestrial, freshwater and...

-Centre for Science and Environment * Niti Aayog vice chairperson Rajiv Kumar releases the report, which provides the real picture of organic farming in India: only 2 per cent of India’s net sown area organically farmed, and a mere 1.3 per cent of farmers registered to do organic farming * Organic and natural farming must be upscaled to make Indian agriculture sustainable, says the report * Needs to be turned into a mass...