Data & Insights

Regardless of whether one is pro moonlighting or opposed to it, the raging debate over the issue signals a clash between traditional notions of employment, and an emerging world of work where flexibility reigns supreme

In this interview with Mint, Sabina Dewan highlights the reasons for India's low female labour force participation rates, and what must be done to improve women's employment. India lags many of its Asian peers in participation of females in the country's workforce. Improving women's labour force participation will lead to harnessing the massive productive potential of half of the country's population and help in yielding enormous dividends for the future of the country and economy.

In a nation devoted to powerful goddesses, the average Indian woman still struggles to realize her potential. From normative social restrictions and concerns about physical safety to the disproportionate burden of domestic responsibilities, day after day, generation after generation, in big ways and small, our women confront multiple barriers.

Recent discontent in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar has been manifesting in a different kind of collective action: ‘job riots’. Perhaps this is unsurprising, given the employment crisis that plagues India, but the crisis in UP is in the spotlight because the state is in the throes of a high-stakes election.

Across developing countries, the combined forces of rapid population growth, a burgeoning youth workforce, and urbanisation have created a policy imperative to generate jobs at an enormous scale. While primary cities must play a role in this job creation, it is unrealistic to imagine that all the necessary jobs, or even the majority, can be created in a single metropolitan area. In this blog, the authors make the case for government measures and policies focusing on creating jobs and promoting economic development in secondary cities.

How practical is it to aspire to be self-employed? Does it pay off for all those who venture? What are the pitfalls?

With 1.4 billion people, India is well on its way to becoming the world’s most populous country, beating China. Our youth population alone is larger than the total population of the US, or that of any other industrialized country. It is understandable then that a quest to achieve scale is among the top priorities of the government’s development interventions.

What does the Fourth Industrial Revolution or also known as "Industry 4.0" mean for societies, economies and workers in Asia.

Labour regulations in India are as sensitive a subject as they are complex and cumbersome. Workers are often rightly identified as the lifeblood of any organization or industry.

Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford, in conversation with Sabina Dewan on the likely length and depth of the economic crisis induced by COVID-19, and the steps that are necessary now to ensure that the economic recovery leads to more resilient economies, livelihoods, and communities.