Through the Looking Glass

  What the numbers say—how men and women spend their day differently; and how much bijli, sadak, paani can improve productivity Here’s a question that has been of interest to me: in a country of 1.4 billion people, if only approximately 400 million are in the workforce, what is it that the remaining billion people do? We now have some answers. Time Use Survey 2019, compiled and released by the Ministry of Statistics and Planning Implementation (MOSPI) reveals interesting data about the pattern of time use by Indians. This is how the day of an “average” Indian goes. (Yes, there is no average Indian person – this is the average of the times spent across men and women in rural and urban India.) Out of the 24 hours in a day, almost exactly half is spent in “self-care and maintenance” – this leaves only 12 hours, which is typically used for these five activities: employment and related activities (2.7 hours), unpaid domestic services for household members (2.2 hours), culture, l...

Financial Express Many of the networks of value could start to become ‘utilities’ as they become more embedded in everyday lives In the previous article , we introduced the idea of the D-sector. The three traditional sectors have a well-defined, or largely settled, understanding of the many elements that build them: (1) what resources are required, (2) employment and its regulations, (3) the path to skills, (4) how they are priced and valued, (5) taxation policies, and (6) their impact on society. We detail these below. Defining the D-sector Resources required : Five elements are required to build a sturdy ‘digital cocoon’: the ability to (1) get on a network, (2) communicate and connect, (3) add value, (4) make and receive payments and (5) access assets and liabilities. We detailed these in the earlier article. There is a role for both the public and the private sector in creating the networks. Many networks that help create value in the fourth sector are largely private today: th...

Financial Express   The new normal after Covid-19 requires a re-imagining of macroeconomics: we need to start defining the contours of, and measuring, the fourth sector. (First of a two-part article) “There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times.” Edmund Burke's quote highlighted the rising of the Fourth Estate as press and media became an important pillar of the society. A similar momentous time is upon us again, courtesy the pandemic, as we recognize what brings income and wealth to the society. In an earlier article , “ Getting India digitally ready: COVID-19 pandemic highlights urgent need to build digital cocoons for the whole population ” (May 15, 2020, The Financial Express), we had looked at the importance of and need to build “digital cocoons” for a large segment of India’s p...

Financial Express Shape of economic recovery will determine employment, debt and exchange rates The immediate fiscal deficit dynamics and growth outcomes for India post Covid-19 lockdown have been the subject of intense analysis and discussion. The human crisis of lives and livelihood did demand both an immediate and urgent response. With the lockdown now opening and economic activity picking up, it is important to look beyond FY21 to see how India could fare in the first half of the next decade. Discussions have focussed on whether the economic recovery will be L, U, V, W, or a swoosh, a la the logo of a famous sports brand. These descriptors refer to the shape of the chart when plotting real GDP (on y-axis) over time (on x-axis). The GDP in FY20 is estimated to be Rs 204 trillion (Rs 204 lakh crore) and if it had continued to grow at 8% in real terms, GDP would have reached Rs 300 trillion by FY25. Depending on the inflation trajectory, the nominal number would have been highe...

The Financial Express A revised estimate of the labour market in 2022 finds 500 million Indians could still be dependent on agriculture India’s consumption story is predicated upon the millennial and post-millennial demographic performing productive, paying jobs. A revised forecast of India’s labour market by 2022E is sobering: half-a-billion people are expected to be dependent on agriculture, contributing to only a ninth of the GDP. The pace of transition is not encouraging—we examine the implications of this on urbanisation, inequality and women empowerment, among other factors. A review of 24 industry reports commissioned by the National Skills Development Council (NSDC) and their comparison with similar reports that NSDC had put together around the end of the last decade shows a sharp fall in overall expected job creation. The earlier forecast expected to see 654 million working Indians by 2022E, this number is now lower at 575 million. The earlier estimate pegged Indians em...

Forbes India The country faces many challenges in diverse sectors but reforms in education and skilling its workforce can script a new growth story India’s demographic dividend has already begun and over the next few decades will be powering the rise of its workforce. India’s workforce of 484 million people (in 2011) has the potential to increase to 850 million by 2025. This compares with the peak workforce of 830 million that China is expected to have in 2016. As China loses numbers in its workforce, potentially, 366 million people would have joined the Indian labour pool over a decade and a half. Women have hardly been a part of India’s workforce and therefore, their entry will power the demand for jobs and supply of labour. India needs to create 20-24 million jobs a year, or around 2 million jobs a month—double of what we are accustomed to hearing. India has failed to move people out of agriculture, with half the workforce (240 million people) still stuck in an activity that ...

The Financial Express Over the past seven years, India has strongly economically implemented a minimum-wage regime via MGNREGA: We hypothesise that this may have driven rural women out of the workforce leading to jobless growth. Basic economics tells us that an artificial floor or cap on prices leads to the misallocation of resources: minimum-wage regulations drive out workers from the labour market whose productivity is below the wage. Skill development is the key to making the labour force productive. In two of our earlier notes dated July 10, 2012, and June 27, 2011, we had asked the question Where have all the girls gone Both the NSSO and the Labour Bureau surveys pointed out the low or declining labour force participation of women especially in rural India (see table). Our earlier notes only pointed out these trends as there was no clarity on why women were dropping out of the workforce. Some experts thought women may have started spending more time on education and skill dev...