Water and Jobs

In this article by The Indian Express, India’s young consumers are shown powering demand, tracking credit scores and fuelling a surge in borrowing, even as millions of graduates remain locked out of stable jobs. This widening disconnect, as research from JustJobs Network suggests, raises larger questions about whether the country’s demographic advantage can translate into durable economic gains.

India’s Gender Budget has grown steadily, yet implementation challenges persist. Drawing on fieldwork in Odisha, JJN’s researcher Kripa Krishna examines in her piece for Ideas for India on how weak local capacity, limited accountability, and gaps in last-mile delivery undermine welfare outcomes. It argues that without strengthening public systems and evaluating existing schemes, increased allocations risk falling short of translating into meaningful improvements in women’s economic empowerment.

A workday shouldn’t hinge on finding a usable toilet, yet for many women in India, it does. In her article for The Policy Edge, Kaushiki Sanyal, Fellow, JustJobs Network, argues that the focus on menstrual leave in India's policy debates misses a more immediate and pervasive constraint: the absence of functional sanitation. She contends that without addressing this everyday barrier, efforts to improve women’s workforce participation will remain incomplete.

Urban women’s participation in India’s labour market remains limited despite rising overall female labour force participation. This article examines whether platform work can enable women’s economic empowerment. It finds that platforms often reproduce inequalities through unpaid care burdens, unsafe mobility, and weak protections. Without improved infrastructure, childcare, safety, and labour protections, it risks becoming digitised informality rather than a pathway to mobility.

The DDU-GKY scheDespite schemes like DDU-GKY, formal skilling remains limited for rural youth, with only about 3.9 % accessing structured training compared with 7.1 % in urban areas. Persistent barriers such as low awareness, uneven outreach, mobility constraints, and social norms, particularly affect women’s participation. JJN’s research highlights that addressing these structural and social challenges is crucial to making skill training inclusive and effective for rural youth.me was designed to bridge skilling and formal jobs for rural youth. However, low awareness, distant placements, social factors, and curriculum gaps hinder uptake.

JustJobs Network's Aditya Prem Kumar examines why technical skills alone are no longer enough to ensure meaningful employment for India's youth — and what it will take to close the employability gap.

At the AICESIS panel in Curaçao, Sabina Dewan highlighted how AI is accelerating inequalities and emphasised that without human-centric regulation, social protection, and renewed social dialogue, AI’s disruptions risk undermining workers and economies—particularly in the Global South.

India's rapid transition toward electric vehicles (EVs) is reshaping the country's industrial landscape and workforce dynamics. Yet we know surprisingly little about the broader impact of this shift on labour markets. JustJobs Network is seeking to address this knowledge gap through its leadership of the FutureWORKS Collective, an initiative funded by the International Development Research Centre. Our first project under the banner of decarbonization and jobs examines how this transition will affect regional economies and labour markets.

In a landmark shift, the Supreme Court's 2025 ruling in Dharam Singh & Anr. v. State of UP & Anr. declared that "perennial work deserves perennial posts". Breaking from decades of judicial precedent, the court held that long-serving daily wage workers in government service performing essential, continuous functions must be regularised, with full employment benefits. The judgment directly challenges past rulings that treated temporary government employment as inherently non-regularisable, instead emphasizing the nature and continuity of the work as central to constitutional fairness.

HSBC's Quality of Life report reveals a shift among Gen Z from traditional wealth accumulation to seeking balance, fulfilment, and purpose, with "multi retirements" emerging as a trend. But Sabina Dewan highlights this perspective reflects the privileged few. In India and other developing countries, most young people continue to struggle with low earnings and lack of social security and even well-paying jobs can feel isolating and purposeless.

Despite high education levels, Kerala faces alarmingly high rates of youth who are Not in Education, Employment, or Training (NEET). This disconnect between education and labour force participation signals a deep socioeconomic challenge. Based on qualitative interviews with a range of stakeholders in the state, JustJobs Network's Isha Gupta unpacks this paradox, pointing to a mismatch between youth aspirations and available opportunities.

JJN's Sabina Dewan writes on how technological advancement, trade shocks, climate change, and the energy transition are transforming how we live and work, faster than the ability of our education and skill systems to keep pace. She says urgent, comprehensive reforms — from effective implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) to stronger industry partnerships — are necessary to improve our education and skills systems.