The Periodic Labour Force Survey provides employment–unemployment statistics for both the rural and urban areas on an annual basis and also quarterly estimates of key employment–unemployment indicators for the urban areas. Sample households interviewed in the survey are randomly selected after due stratification of the households residing in the selected villages and urban
Recently, a tweet on a Bangalore housing society asking for cuts in domestic worker salaries after the Congress government there introduced free bus passes had gone viral. Underpinning this move is our society’s pervasive disregard for informal work.
The Economic Survey normally paints a picture of the economy over the past fiscal, even as it seeks to forecast the outlook for the coming year. This year’s assessment has been eagerly awaited, as the forthcoming budget will be the last for a full year by the incumbent government, and projects a mood of confidence and optimism in the run up to the elections in 2024
This week the elected representatives will troop into Parliament to represent the electors. Ostensibly! Frequently, time set aside to ponder over public cause is hijacked by puerile puffery. If the past is to be treated as the prologue, the four-week Monsoon Session will witness high political drama and the amplification of allegations and counter-allegations ricocheting off the walls of the 1927 edifice.
The pall of grief and gloom unleashed by the pandemic, with millions pushed over the edge of penury, signals the need to put public purpose above partisan politics. The expectation though wholly legitimate may be a tall ask given the reign of rhetoric. Hopefully, the elected will find the occasion, between bouts of hyperbole and halla bol, to seek answers to questions of those struggling to preserve lives and livelihoods.