Taking a walk down memory lane, BJP's national president Jagat Prakash Nadda today reminisced his student days in the Himachal Pradesh University from where his political innings began four decades back.
By Dr Soumyadip Chattopadhyay, Dr Arjun Kumar, Sunidhi Agarwal, Nikhil Jacob
The exodus of migrant workers to their home states due to loss of livelihood in the wake of the Covid-19 induced lockdown was unprecedented. It brought unimaginable hardship to these city makers who thrived on the low paid and unstable jobs provided by their foster cities. The pandemic exposed the ill-preparedness of the urban spaces in handling such a crisis. This is corroborated by data which shows that the urban areas were much more affected during the lockdown and had a poor recovery rate post lockdown, in comparison to the rural areas, noted Dr Amit Basole. He was delivering a special lecture on urban employment and social policy in the wake of Covid-19, organized by Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI), New Delhi.
By Dr Arjun Kumar, Ritika Gupta
Delivering a Special Lecture organized by Centre for Work and Welfare (CWW) at the Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI) on Labour, Employment and Pandemic: Policy Suggestions and Way Forward for Budget 2021, Prof Santosh Mehrotra, retired professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), observed that the fiscal stimulus provided by the Government of India (GoI) post-lockdown was severely inadequate. It was only a fraction of what was provided post the 2008 global financial meltdown where the effects on the economy were comparatively mediocre, he maintains.
Prof Mehrotra stated that while going into the ill-planned lockdown, India already had about 280 million unemployed people. He added that the growth rate of the country was falling quarter by quarter since 2016 and had hit a dismal low of 4.1% in early 2020. The lockdown imposed in March, which is touted as the most stringent in the world by various reports, skyrocketed India’s unemployme