Op-Eds

India’s economic growth has not eased job insecurity, as employment expansion has remained modest and job quality weak, especially outside agriculture. Manufacturing and services saw limited employment growth between 2012 and 2023, while agriculture’s shrinking share pushed more workers into non-farm sectors that are becoming less labour-intensive even as their economic output rises. Economic growth...   Read More

Competitiveness and quality must advance together. Regulation that raises costs without raising safety standards undermines the very manufacturing strategy India is trying to build. India’s decision to withdraw quality control orders (QCOs) on a wide basket of industrial raw materials marks one of the most meaningful regulatory resets in recent years. In a manufacturing economy...   Read More

While India has made progress in installed capacity for renewable energy sources, power generation from renewables remains low. In this post, Chaudhuri and Rath content that renewable energy budgets of several states continue to be limited, with only a few states demonstrating a strong commitment to sustainable energy transition. They recommend balancing capital and revenue...   Read More

Women form close to 42% of farm workers. Skilling schemes specifically designed for women is imperative to not only raise their productivity but also to empower them. India’s agriculture stands at a critical crossroads. On the one hand, rapid technological transformation — from drones and digital platforms to precision farming — is reshaping how crops...   Read More

The 30 ‘critical minerals’ pose different risk levels. India’s critical minerals strategy stands at a crossroads. In June 2023, the Government of India released a list of 30 critical minerals through a systematic three-stage assessment process evaluating economic importance, strategic value, and import dependencies. Yet two years later, policy implementation treats all 30 minerals with...   Read More

Rather than viewing employment generation solely through the lens of large industry or government programmes, policy must confront the reality that employment generation is tied to improving the productivity of its smallest enterprises The recently announced new labour codes are likely to transform the employment landscape of India. The discourse on employment, however, primarily centres...   Read More

An NCAER survey shows that Indian firms seemed to have weathered the US tariff storm, for now Amidst the international uncertainty caused by rapid announcements of US trade policies balanced by rationalisation of GST rates, business sentiments as measured by the NCAER Business Confidence Index (BCI) had eased in the second quarter of 2025-26. The...   Read More

The continent’s bid to rebalance global finance  Could there be a moratorium on further studies diagnosing what ails African development? The continent has been examined, measured and prescribed to exhaustion – yet the patient deteriorates. Since 2000, multilateral institutions have catalogued the same barriers: mispriced capital, unsustainable debt, illicit outflows, and governance asymmetries. What Africa...   Read More

Real-time digital hiring signals, analysed through AI, offer India a powerful new way to anticipate and close emerging skill gaps India’s debate on skills often concentrate on curriculum reforms, institutional capacity, and the widening gap between education and employer needs. However, a more fundamental challenge concerns our ability to interpret the labour market almost in...   Read More

Though the incidence of son preference in Indian families has fallen, there is still little preference for daughters. Instead of asking parents, just count their children to get a sense of what India genuinely values. From 1.33 males for every girl at the first birth to 1.43 at the second and 1.51 at the third,...   Read More