KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

-TheConversation.com/TheWire.in With the cost-of-living crisis now at the top of the public’s agenda in many developed countries, the setting of interest rates has ceased to be just a technical matter and has instead become highly political. Where is the global economy heading in 2023? After all the challenges of last year, it’s a question we ask with trepidation. Just as the economy was dealing with the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,...

-The Hindu BMS chief Hiranmay Pandya said workers face low wages, lack of job security and social security benefits, and had to suffer poor working conditions this year On the second day of the Asia Pacific Regional Meeting of the International Labour Organisation (APRM of ILO), representatives of workers and employers from India on Wednesday highlighted the employment situation in the country. While employers hailed the Union government’s steps to “help” workers...

-The Hindu Further, women need to be included in all facets of livestock development — breeding, veterinary care, extension services, training or access to credit and markets The livestock sector is one of the most rapidly growing components of the rural economy of India, accounting for 5% of national income and 28% of agricultural GDP in 2018-19. In the last six years, the livestock sector grew at 7.9% (at constant prices) while...

Contrary to the rising economic distress on the ground since the last few years, the official press release related to the fourth Annual Report on the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) at first glance seems to give a rosy picture about the employment situation in India.  Defined as the percentage of persons unemployed among the persons in the labour force, the unemployment rate in usual status (principal activity status + subsidiary economic activity status)...