Nothing in India's recent history suggests that India can provide 8-9 million jobs a year, let alone generate 50 million jobs in any reasonable time, notes Mahesh Vyas.
However, the government has enacted an important change to the fixed-term employment framework that may help companies in handing out contractual jobs to its existing permanent workforce.
Reports (not denied by India) that the USA had 'for the first time provided real-time details to their Indian counterparts on the Chinese positions and force strength in advance of a PLA incursion' into Tawang at the LAC in December 2022, helping India thwart China's expansionist designs, show how operationally effective the USA-India friendship has become on the ground. A engaging excerpt from Sreeram Chaulia's must-read new book, Friends: India's Closest Strategic Partners.
Households with only one employed person can be considered to be somewhat vulnerable. Their proportion is rising. Also rising is the proportion of highly vulnerable households with no person employed, observes Mahesh Vyas.
Most employment surveys suffer from drawbacks such as limited data coverage, infrequent data collection, and time lag
Workers moving out of agriculture to the rural labour force were largely getting absorbed in construction activities
Moreover, the process to release those arrested between July 1 to August has started, and many have already been released, it added.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla recognised Rahul Gandhi as the leader of opposition on Wednesday, a day after the Congress communicated its decision to name him for the position to the Lok Sabha Secretariat.
India's cement demand has consistently shown double-digit growth over the past few quarters, primarily driven by infrastructure spending. However, dealers and industry executives note that state elections, festival season, and, in some markets, weddings and pollution may temporarily disrupt this demand story. While the festival season typically sees a slowdown in construction activity, some dealers anticipate this lull extending throughout the entire month as multiple states enter election mode.
A government panel examined the records of employees surveyed by Labour Bureau's quarterly enterprises surveys and mapped it with the EPFO's subscribers and found "unexplained variations" between the two.
A report by the Azim Premji University showed that during the pandemic 270 million Indians were pushed into poverty. Meaning that they were not poor according to the government poverty line before, but have become now. Aakar Patel mulls on the state of the nation as the Modi government enters its eighth year.
Mithun Chakraborty started from scratch in bit roles and had no Godfather backing him. Yet, remarkably, his career now straddles six decades and he continues to win acclaim, observes Dinesh Raheja.
Managing the senior generals has proven to be quite a headache for General Asim Munir, even as he and his team of loyal henchmen labour hard to dispel the sense of unhappiness among the public about the army's overbearing presence and interference in matters 'civilian', notes Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at RA&W.
The other members of the interim government will be finalised after consultations with various political parties, the press secretary added.
'It will take a long time for people's memory to be misled by a prime minister who is so arrogant and who refuses to acknowledge his own faults.'
The country's demographic dividend is dissipating, with seriously adverse consequences for young India, asserts Shankar Acharya, former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India.
The statement comes in the wake of two independent members of the NSC, P C Mohanan and J V Meenakshi, quitting the Commission over disagreements with the government on the back-series GDP data and delay in release of labour force survey. Mohanan was also the acting chairperson of the Commission.
'The new government will have to contend with slowing economic growth, weak private investment, anaemic exports and vulnerable external imbalances, a stressed financial system, mounting fiscal pressures (including high government debt-to-GDP ratios) and an exceptionally bad employment situation,' says Shankar Acharya, former chief economic adviser to the Government of India.
India has the lowest labour force participation rate in South Asia and one of the lowest in the world, points out Aakar Patel.
'From the time India liberalised in the 1990s, the government has policies are for facilitating the growth of the manufacturing sector.' 'The policies were put in the hope that growth of the manufacturing sector will lead to increased employment,' points out Chidambaran G Iyer, Senior Fellow, Pahle India Foundation.
The report, 'More and Better Jobs in South Asia', released on Thursday said the required new jobs will be equivalent to about 40 per cent of the increase in the global labour force during the period.
Some India states are likely to record a significantly higher number of heatwave days, according to the national weather body.
'Revision of the base year for both CPI and GDP are long overdue.' 'The basic data that went into the 2011-2012 series were mainly from surveys done in 2011 or earlier.' 'We have since seen the emergence of new sectors like platform-based work and online marketing.' 'The employment surveys and the consumption surveys need to reflect these adequately.'
'Of the 9.5 million unemployed who stopped looking for jobs, nearly seven million were young.' 'Is it possible that the young decided to continue with studies rather than look for jobs?' asks Mahesh Vyas.
Through the past few decades, India has been transformed from a largely agriculturally-oriented economy to one in which the services sector accounts for an overwhelming share of gross domestic product (GDP).
'Is a rapidly growing working-age population a prerequisite for growth or a social tinderbox?'
The thing is that unemployment and joblessness are a personally felt shame. It is not easy to mobilise a set of people who identify with others as a group that cannot get work, asserts Aakar Patel.
C P Chandrasekhar, who has served on key statistical panels in the past both as a chairman and member, said he was present in the campus when the ruckus broke out on Sunday and found the incident "disturbing" and "unprecedented", and that it further undermined the faith in the system. Somesh Jha reports.
'A growth of above 7 per cent when the fundamentals of the economy are becoming stronger still makes India the fastest growing large economy.'
'Garm Hava understands that the scorching, hate-filled, doubt-filled affair between Hindus and Muslims is our national love affair.' Sreehari Nair revisits M S Sathyu's classic film, featuring the incomparable Balraj Sahni at his finest in his final role.
Is India witnessing jobless growth or is there actually no issue with employment? The real story is between the first two suggesting that though there is sufficient employment, the challenge is to create well-paying quality jobs, says Amitabh Kant.
Can 3 crore out of the 8.9 crore young male population of the nine states set off on a pilgrimage that extends for about a month? If yes, then what can we infer regarding the state of the young working population in these states, asks Mahesh Vyas.
Unemployment level in India and other South Asian countries remained static for a decade since 1993 despite trade rising from 20 to 34 per cent of GDP in the last 13 years.
With the two members quitting, the NSC now has only two members -- Chief Statistician Pravin Srivastava and NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant.
An overwhelming proportion of the unemployed declare their nature of occupation as students. In the quarter ended December 2021, 77% of the unemployed who were actively looking for jobs were students. This syncs well with another data, that 77% of the unemployed are between 15 and 24 years of age, reveals Mahesh Vyas.
India's stiff labour laws were one key issue that Apple CEO Tim Cook discussed with Prime Minister Modi on his recent visit.
Since 2014, India has left its moorings as a pluralist, modern, secular State because that is how the BJP wants it to be, notes Aakar Patel.
'In India, a large proportion of the labour force does not have a regular job.' 'People are mostly employed as daily wage workers, agricultural labourers, small farmers and self-employed traders.' 'These move in and out of "jobs" fairly rapidly.' 'It is the high proportion of these workers in India that makes unemployment volatile,' explains Mahesh Vyas.
Indian women have education, inspiration and perspiration -- but not enough employment, points out Mahesh Vyas.
A remarkable story which helped in transforming a bureaucratic organization, to a customer centric organization. This experience may inspire several government / private organizations to modify or adopt digitisation to transform their business, notes Professor N Ravichandran (retd).
