'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.
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.
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.
'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.'
'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.'
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 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.
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).
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.
'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?'
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.
India's stiff labour laws were one key issue that Apple CEO Tim Cook discussed with Prime Minister Modi on his recent visit.
'A growth of above 7 per cent when the fundamentals of the economy are becoming stronger still makes India the fastest growing large economy.'
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.
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.
With the two members quitting, the NSC now has only two members -- Chief Statistician Pravin Srivastava and NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant.
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.
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.
'If we want real democracy, the economy itself will need to be democratised.'
If the government is able to deliver the promised projects, the large number of youth will be taken off the streets and that is not acceptable to the Pakistan army nor the terrorists hiding in Pakistan, notes Brigadier Narender Kumar (retd).
She also demanded that Chief Minister N Biren Singh admit his failure and apologise to the people of Manipur.
Indian women have education, inspiration and perspiration -- but not enough employment, points out Mahesh Vyas.
'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.
Business activity has fallen by a fourth of the pre-COVID levels due to lockdowns imposed by states to contain the spread of the second wave of COVID-19, Japanese brokerage Nomura said on Tuesday. However, it said the falling activity levels will have a muted economic impact and maintained its growth estimates for the year, saying the lockdowns present "downside risks". As of April 25, the Nomura India Business Resumption Index (NIBRI) registered its steepest weekly fall in over a year of 8.5 percentage points to 75.9, which is 24 percentage points below pre-pandemic normal, the brokerage said in a statement.
India's gig workforce is expected to expand to 2.35 crore by 2029-30 from 77 lakh in 2020-21, a NITI Aayog report said on Monday, and recommended extending social security measures for such workers and their families in partnership mode as envisaged in Code on Social Security. The report titled 'India's Booming Gig and Platform Economy' further said gig workers are expected to form 6.7 per cent of the non-agricultural workforce or 4.1 per cent of the total livelihood in India by 2029-30. Gig workers can be broadly classified into platform and non-platform workers.
In the past 12 months, since September 2020, the net cumulative increase in employment has been just 44,483. This is negligible -- just 0.04 million on a base of over 400 million jobs, reveals Mahesh Vyas.
Happily, it does not require the world to hold a mirror up for us. We can look at ourselves and understand easily if we choose to be honest about where we find ourselves three quarters of a century after Independence, asserts Aakar Patel.
From all indications, Sunil Kanugolu is here to stay, though whether his magic will help the Congress in the northern states in the Lok Sabha elections remains to be seen, wonders Aditi Phadnis.
'Unless the economy is sound in the country how can only three movies collected so much business in a single day?'
Why did Karnataka's economic prosperity fail to influence the nature of electoral promises made by political parties in the run-up to the assembly elections? asks A K Bhattacharya.
Equating the imposition of the Emergency with dacoity, he said, "Generally, dacoity is carried out around midnight. Similarly, this dacoity of democracy in the country also took place around midnight."
While the denial rate has dropped slightly to 21 per cent in 2019 from 24 per cent in 2018, the National Foundation for American Policy has said it is much higher for Indian IT companies like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro and very low for American companies like Amazon and Google. For instance, the denial rate for TCS and Infosys in 2019 was 31 per cent and 35 per cent respectively, whereas for Wipro it was 47 per cent and 37 per cent for Tech Mahindra. On the other hand, the denial rate for the new H-1B petitions in 2019 was just four per cent each for Amazon and Google. The denial rate for Microsoft during the same period was six per cent, and Facebook along with Walmart was just three per cent each.
While India's GDP growth slowed to five-year low of 5.8% in Q4, China grew at 6.4%.
The law firms will provide legal opinion on matters related to interpretation of various statutes, such as the Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952, among other things.
