- Financial Express The Union Government will present its ninth and last full budget before national elections in early 2024. But none of the growth engines inspire optimism, Santosh Mehrotra writes in Financial Express.  Nearly 60 percent of India's GDP is accounted for by private onsumption expenditure. However, since demonetisation consumer expenditure has been tepid as job growth fell sharply. Per capita consumption in 2022-23 is just above the level of 2019-20.  Private...

-Scroll.in Increasing unemployment is a major cause for concern. Politicians constantly talk about India being a young country, since two-thirds of the population is under 35 years of age and half of it below 26. Some economists consider this an automatic boon for the economy, since there is a limitless number of workers who could contribute to India’s productive capacity. Finance and investment giant Morgan Stanley, in a report released in November, identified...

- Deccan Herald Covid-19 reverse migration of labour added to joblessness A rise in self-employment and unpaid family labour three years into the Covid-19 pandemic even as wage rates fell is an indication that rural distress has risen, the economist Santosh Mehrotra writes. Economic distress was on an upward trajectory even before the Pandemic and the sudden arrival of millions of reverse migrants in 2020 added to the stock of unemployed people...

-TheWire.in A Minimum Income Guarantee would not just cushion exogenous shocks, but would arrest the process of vulnerability begetting vulnerability. While the worst of the pandemic is behind us, there has been a decline in general purchasing power amidst inflation. The provisional Consumer Food Price Index (combined for rural and urban) for September 2022 is pegged at 8.6%, a huge increase from 0.68% for September 2021. The latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS)...

-TheWire.in If governments wish to raise employment levels in formal sector enterprises and prepare school leavers for the world of work, it is critical that systems of internships and apprenticeships, formally approved and mandated, are encouraged.  In the vast majority of low-income and middle-income countries (LICs/MICs), most students at the secondary/higher secondary level are engaged in general academic education, not vocational education or training. For such students, the transition to the world of...