Op-Eds

With fewer than half of young adults employed, the labour market is increasingly polarised between extreme overwork and underemployment. Today’s young adults (20-29 years) will remain in employment for at least the next three decades. The key question is how many of them are contributing directly to economic activity, as measured by two markers: the...   Read More

With wage progression favouring younger workers, the sector will struggle to retain skilled, middle-level workers. Worker protests across India’s industrial belts have again become a recurring feature of the economic landscape. The demands are rarely un-expected — a living wage, basic job security and some assurance that spending years on the factory floor will amount...   Read More

In the first part of our series on India’s new labour reforms, Afridi and Chandna focus on the Code on Wages, 2019 – in terms of its rationale, the key legislative changes that it entails, state-level implementation, and what the existing theoretical and empirical literature says about its potential impacts. They contend that since the final rules...   Read More

India faces a persistent challenge in generating formal, productive jobs for its growing workforce. The four new Labour Codes rolled out in November 2025, seek to address the structural imbalance in the workforce by simplifying 29 existing labour laws into a more coherent framework.  Over the next five weeks, based on their new NCAER working...   Read More

Underemployment and overwork coexist in India’s youth labour market, revealing how work is unevenly distributed across people and places. India’s youth labour market presents a puzzling picture. Fewer than half of young adults aged 20–29 are employed. Yet among those who are employed, long workdays are common, often extending well beyond a standard eight hours...   Read More

The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), launched in 2017, addressed this by providing annual estimates for rural and urban areas and quarterly estimates for urban areas, replacing the episodic framework with continuous measurement.  India's struggle with timely labour statistics dates back decades. The National Sample Survey Office's (NSSO's) Employment and Unemployment Surveys operated on thick...   Read More

The future of irrigation lies not in choosing between the big and the small, but in integrating the two within a coherent, systems-based approach. India’s irrigation story has long been told through large dams and canal networks. For decades, policy has focused on expanding major and medium irrigation projects to create irrigation potential. Yet, much...   Read More

The ongoing parliamentary session addressing the 33% Women's Reservation Act underscores its profound economic and social advantages. Studies indicate that when women participate in policymaking, the results are transformative—leading to enhanced investments in healthcare and education and a significant drop in child mortality rates. Yet, India still trails behind in female political representation compared to...   Read More

Strengthening enforcement mechanisms is the most critical priority. A persistent challenge in India’s labour market is the weak enforcement of regulations, especially in the informal sector The recent strike by gig workers and the protest by factory workers in UP against low wages and poor working conditions underlie the operational challenges of labour reforms in...   Read More

The growth of India’s economy is a means, not an end in itself. It must translate into good jobs and better lives. However, Time Use survey data shows significant disparities in the hours that India’s young work. Could AI adoption reduce these gaps? The recent revision of India’s gross domestic product (GDP) data has generated...   Read More