-The Hindu The RBI deputy governor reminded the industry that their customers often have lower level of financial awareness and literacy and ‘are often too desperate to turn away any source of credit’. Micro-finance lenders must refrain from chasing profits and introspect on the ‘negative consequences’ of pushing their borrowers into a debt trap, using harsh recovery practices and harassing customers as this could undo the sector’s progress, a top central banker...

-Livemint.com Value-addition per worker needs to rise sharply in several fields for the country to enhance prosperity and reduce inequality It is known that productivity is the key to economic prosperity. How do we raise the productivity of service workers? This is one of the biggest challenges that India faces which hasn’t yet received much attention. Why is this important? First, low and medium-productivity service sectors (services except real estate, business and professional...

-The Hindu The analysis is fraught with caveats and the interpretation of the survey results calls for caution Last week, the Ministry of Labour and Employment released the results of a new Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) for April-June 2021 for the organised (formal) sector. It represents establishments (or units) employing ten or more workers. The surveyed sectors were manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, education, health, accommodation and restaurant, Information Technology/Business Process Outsourcing (IT/BPO),...

The Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (NSS 77th Round), which was released recently, informs one about farm households' income in the crop year 2018-19 and indebtedness in 2019 (as on the date of survey), among other things. Prior to the recent report, Land and Livestock Holding Surveys (LHS) and Situation Assessment Survey (SAS) of Agricultural Households used to be...

-The Hindu The Agriculture Ministry signed agreements on Tuesday with Reliance’s Jio Platforms, ITC, Cisco, NCDEX e-Markets and Ninjacart to develop agritech solutions using its National Farmers Database which includes information of 5.5 crore farmers. Microsoft, Amazon and Patanjali are among the companies that signed agreements for similar pilot projects earlier this year. This is part of an effort to modernise the agriculture sector by infusing new technologies so that farmers can...