Working Paper Series
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Tracking workers across generations – a cohort-based analysis
Alongside rapid economic growth, India also saw steady de-agrarianisation of its economy in terms of contribution to GDP. In terms of employment, however, the movement out of agriculture was slower, and when they did exit, it was often a withdrawal from the workforce entirely. In…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Association between Caste and Class in India- Evolution of Caste-Class Dynamics during Economic Growth
Caste and class are two major markers of social and economic stratification in India. They play a crucial role in sustaining and strengthening the process of social exclusion. It has been often expected that the process of economic growth and modernization may weaken the congruence…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
What did they say- Respondent identity, question framing and the measurement of employment
In developing countries, a precise approach to measuring women’s employment remains elu- sive. Emerging evidence underscores the pivotal role of survey methodology, encompassing respondent selection and question framing, in shaping the assessment of women’s employ- ment. Drawing from two labor market experiments in rural India,…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Jobless growth and structural transformation- Some theoretical considerations and empirical evidence from India
Authors: Zico Dasgupta Amit Basole
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Telephone surveys for data collection – some reflections
The last few years have seen an upheaval in practices of data collection and survey methods. Even before the pandemic, several data collection endeavors had begun the transition to digital, computer-assisted, and tablet-based surveys. India’s labor force surveys themselves had moved away from traditional paper-…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
The Unhappy Marriage of Women’s Work and Spousal Violence in India
Author: Vijayshree Jayaraman
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Estimating the productivity gap between organised and unorganised small-scale units in India’s manufacturing sector
Small manufacturing firms are considered to be engines of growth and job creation. While most research on small firms focuses on formal sector units, in India informal sector units far outnumber the formal. This is true even for manufacturing units employing 5 to 49 workers,…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Labour market flows and gender differentials in urban unemployment over the pandemic
Utilising data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey, the researchers estimate quarterly changes in urban labour market flow over the period 2018 to 2022 and the impact on unemployment rates for men and women. Their analysis provides non-intuitive explanations for established findings as well as…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Who was Impacted and How? | COVID-19 Pandemic and the Long Uneven Recovery in India
We investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on income levels, poverty, and inequality in both the immediate aftermath and during the long uneven recovery till December 2021 using high-frequency household survey data from India. We find that the average all-India household income dropped between…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Did the nation-wide implementation of e‑FMS in MGNREGS result in reduced expenditures? A re-examination of the evidence
This paper revisits a part of the analysis by Banerjee et al. (2020), in which they examine the consequences of the nation-wide scale up of reforms to the funds management system (e‑FMS) in India’s national workfare programme, using a two-way fixed effects specification. They report…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Loss, recovery and the long road ahead: Tracking India’s informal workers through the pandemic
Drawing on results from a panel of 2778 workers interviewed during and after the 68-day hard lockdown imposed in India, the following study examines the livelihood impact of the pandemic and the extent of subsequent recovery or lack thereof. Focussing specifically on workers located in…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Labour incomes in India- A comparison of PLFS and CMIE-CPHS data
The Covid-19 pandemic has created a need for high frequency employment and income data to gauge the nature and extent of shock and recovery from month to month. Lack of such high frequency household-level data from official sources has forced researchers to rely almost entirely…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
How Comparable are India’s Labour Market Surveys?
The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s (CMIE) Consumer Pyramid Household surveys have emerged as an important source of regular labour market data for India. Given the differences in methods in data collection between the CMIE and official employment sources, it becomes exceedingly important to establish…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Financing Fiscal Support under Alternative Policy Frameworks
Author: Zico Dasgupta
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Improving Survey Quality using Para Data- Lessons from the India Working Survey
The efficacy of survey-based policy recommendations is primarily dictated by the quality of data collected in the first place. Is the survey truly representative of the population it claims to characterise? Are respondents voicing their true opinions or are they playing to the gallery? Did…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Where Do They Come From, Where Do They Go Labour Market Transitions in India
Using two rounds of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) covering the periods 2017 – 18 and 2018 – 19, we construct a panel of urban Indian individuals aged 15 to 65, and analyse the dynamics of their participation – or non-participation – in the labour force. We construct…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
How Much is a Government Job in India Worth
Author: Kunal Mangal
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Down and Out- The Gendered Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on India’s Labour Market
The Covid-19 pandemic has created unprecedented disruptions in labour markets across the world including loss of employment and decline in incomes. Using panel data from India, we investigate the differential impact of the shock on labour market outcomes for male and female workers. We find…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Covid-19 Crisis- An Indictment of India’s Informal Economy
This paper attempts to look at the ways informality is conceptualized in India and argues that the problems with the laws pertaining to informal labour are not simply an implementation issue, but the design of the labour laws itself exclude informal labour. While reviewing the…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Explaining COVID-19 Lockdown, Employment and Migration in India- Challenges and Prospects
This paper makes an attempt to do an assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on employment and migration in India. The analysis is based on up-to-date facts and figures available in the public domain on economic growth, employment and migration. Using the employment elasticity approach,…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Technical & Vocational Education and Training in India- Lacking Vision, Strategy and Coherence
Author: Santosh Mehrotra
-
CSE Working Paper Series
A Short Note on Debt-Neutral Fiscal Policy
One of the central concerns against increasing expenditures in the recent period has been the possibility of an adverse impact on debt-GDP ratio. Once stability of debt-ratio is regarded as a policy-objective, the aggregate expenditure that is consistent with the stability condition gets determined by…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Tracking Employment Trajectories during the Covid-19 Pandemic- Evidence from Indian Panel Data
Using the CMIE’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey, we track a panel of households prior to the lockdown (in December 2019), during the lockdown (in April 2020) and afterwards (in August 2020) to investigate the employment and income effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Can a Machine Learn Democracy
E‑governance has changed the functioning of public programmes in India. In most cases, one technological platform is expected to perform multiple roles such as improving administrative efficiency, as an information repository for the beneficiaries and as a system for accountability. However, techno-solutionism can be incongruous…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Labour Reforms in the Indian State of Rajasthan- a boon or a bane
The authors examine the impact of labour law deregulations in the Indian state of Rajasthan on plant employment and performance. In 2014, after a long time, Rajasthan was the first Indian state that introduced labour reforms in the Industrial Disputes Act (1947), the Factories Act…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Mechanisms of Surplus Appropriation in the Informal Sector- A Case Study of Tribal Migrants in Ahmedabad’s Construction Industry
This paper is based on fieldwork I had undertaken regarding tribal migrant workers in the construction sector, in Ahmedabad in May-July 2018, coordinated by Aajevika Bureau(AB). I had undertaken this fieldwork to assess the work of AB and advise them about strategies to collectivize migrant…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Economic Transition, Dualism, and Informality in India- Nature and Patterns of Household-level Transitions
We examine the Indian economy during a peak period of high growth between 2005 – 2012 to analyze nature and patterns of household-level transitions across the different sectors of the economy and to relate these transitions to the broader process of structural change. We use a pan-India…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Income Distribution and Effective Demand in the Indian Economy
Does there exist a trade-off between labour’s income share and output growth rate? Or does a reduction in wage share in itself reduce the output growth rate? These questions have returned to the centre stage in the midst of India’s present crisis as the government…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Did Employment Rise or Fall in India between 2011 and 2017- Estimating Absolute Changes in the Workforce
The recently released data from the 2017 – 2018 Periodic Labour Force Survey have created a controversy regarding the quantity of employment generated in the past few years in India. Estimates ranging from an absolute increase of 23 million to an absolute decline of 15.5 million have…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Building a Social Security Architecture for Informal Workers in India, Finally!
Social protection and social security have very limited coverage in India. This reality has not changed since independence, one of greatest failures of the development strategy India adopted in the early fifties. The labour force is predominantly unorganized. As much as 91 per cent of…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Pandemic, informality, and vulnerability- Impact of COVID-19 on livelihoods in India
We analyze findings from a large-scale survey of around 5000 respondents across 12 states of India to study the impact of COVID-19 pandemic containment measures (lockdown) on employment, livelihoods, food security and access to relief measures. We find a massive increase in unemployment, an equally…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Fiscal Transfers and Inflation- Evidence from India
Controlling for monetary policy, government transfers are potentially inflationary. This, however, may not be true when the economy is demandconstrained. Using a panel data of 17 Indian states over 30 years, we show that government transfers via welfare programs do not lead to inflation. For…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
The Size Structure of India’s Enterprises- Not Just the Middle is Missing
Most international development economics and industrial organization literature emphasises the importance of SMEs (small and medium enterprises) as important to output, but especially to employment generation. Countries have different definitions for SMEs. In India the MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) are defined in terms…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Industrial Policies in India- Did They Work
This article analyses relationships between the implementation of state-level industrial policies in India and manufacturing sector economic performance (employment and gross value added), utilising data from the Annual Survey of Industries conducted by the Government of India. I employ panel data fixed-effects regression models to…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
India’s Employment Crisis- Rising Education Levels and Falling Non-agricultural Job Growth
Falling total employment is an unprecedented trend seen from 2011-12 to 2017 – 18. Due to a decline of employment in agriculture and manufacturing and slow growth of construction jobs, the process of structural transformation, which had gained momentum post-2004 – 5, has stalled since 2012. Mounting educated youth…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Inequalities in the Gendered Labour Market- What can be Done
Globally, research has shown that, there is a high correlation between the level of per capita income and the rate of female labour force participation. At the same time the agency and autonomy of women in a country improve with the level of female labour…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
How Comparable are India’s Labour Market Surveys- A comparison of NSS, Labour Bureau and CMIE Estimates
With the lack of official government data on unemployment and other labour market indicators, the most viable and recent source have been the regular household surveys conducted by the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE). Given the differences in methods in data collection, it…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Towards higher female work participation in India- what can be done
A continuous and sharp decline in the already depressed female labour force participation rate in India post 2005, particularly in the face of its rapid economic growth raises questions about the inclusiveness of the growth process. The paper recommends a set of policies based on…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
The Evolving Discourse on Job Quality- From Normative Frameworks to Measurement Indicators- The Indian Example
Indians are optimistic. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2017 Global Attitudes Survey, three out of four Indians believe that, “when children today in India grow up, they will be better off financially than their parents” (Pew Global Attitudes Survey, 2017). Families hinge their hopes…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Long-Run Performance of the Organised Manufacturing Sector in India- Aggregate Trends and Industry-level Variation
Despite its weak performance in terms of job creation in recent years, the organised manufacture sector remains vital to employment policy. This paper investigates the aggregate trends in this sector, in employment, output, labour-capital ratio, as well as wage share and wage rates at the…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Changes in Production Regimes and Challenges to Collective Bargaining- A study of the Gurgaon Industrial Belt
This study focuses on the Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal-Tapukara-Neemrana industrial belt in Haryana and Rajasthan, which is an important ‘node’ or part of Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) and a major destination of capital in the last few decades. The study is based on primary survey work of qualitative…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Pride and Prejudice- The Condition of Handloom Weavers in West Bengal
In India, the relative importance of the handloom sector, one of the largest employers following agriculture, has been declining for last few decades. The All India Handloom Census data for the year 2009-10 however showed a rather modest decline in the number of weavers in…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Labour Absorption in Indian Manufacturing- The Case of the Garment Industry
A striking feature of the Indian economy has been the relatively small contribution made by the manufacturing sector to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and, more importantly, to employment. In 2013, manufacturing accounted for only 16.5 per cent of India’s GDP, compared to 29.7…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Hard Work, Low Pay — Work Patterns Among Rural Women in West Bengal
This study is the outcome of the experience of the Shramajivi Mahila Samity, an independent, non-party mass organisation of mainly rural working women in West Bengal. Shramajivi Mahila Samity works on gender discrimination and rights of women. It does not run any direct income generating…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Bijolia’s Harvest of Stone- Conditions of Work Among Quarrying Labour in Rajasthan
Author: Anumeha Yadav
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Gender Differentials in Expansion of Informal Enterprises
The policy framework in India has provided support to the micro and small enterprises. In 2006, the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Act 2006 came into existence (msme.gov.in). This Act aimed at promoting and developing micro, small and medium enterprises. In India, the MSME…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Domestic Workers and the Challenges of Collective Action in Informal Work
Domestic workers (henceforth, DW), are a part of the large ‘informal’ sector of urban economy and society in India.ii According to the NSSO data, over the last two decades, the DW populationiii has emerged as the second largest urban informal workforce (Chen and Raveendran 2011),…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Recrafting Indian Industry- A Note
After independence in 1947, India embarked on an ambitious path of industrialisation, following the standard modern developmental prescription drawn from the experience of the so-called developed countries. Since the inauguration of the reform era in 1991, this model of development, duly globalised, has been reinforced…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
The Indian Labour Market- A Fallacy, Two Looming Crises and a Silent Tragedy
Analyses of the Indian labour market have been been characterized by the lack of recognition of one major fallacy or myth, two looming crises, and a silent tragedy resulting from unrealized expectations. The fallacy is that 12 mn join the Indian labour force every year,…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
The Fourth Industrial Revolution- Realizing India’s Demographic Dividend
This paper attempts to explore the avenues for future jobs given the impact of technology in the form of internet of things, robots, cloud computing, nano technology, automization of manufacturing etc. and the measures in place to address these challenges. The paper explores the labour…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Of “Missing Middle” and Size-based Regulation
Preponderance of small (that is, less than 10 workers) sized manufacturing establishments in India is said to reject their inability to growth in size on account of prohibitive cost of regulatory compliance (and the associated corruption). Similarly, the “U” shaped (or bi-modal) distribution of manufacturing…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
A Policy Proposal for Green Jobs in India
The policymakers, particularly on the right side of the aisle, have traditionally stigmatized any form of environmental regulations, as being a detrimental practice, which raises the cost of production, disproportionately affects the small businesses, and imposes expenses on the economy that tend to stifle economic…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Analysis of Payment Delays and Delay Compensation in MGNREGA
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) provides 100 days of work in a year for every rural household at a minimum wage. Because of MGNREGA, for the first time in the country, a transaction-based management information system (MIS) has been made available…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
The Evolution of India’s Industrial Labour Share and its Correlates
There has been substantial recent interest in the decline of labour shares across countries. For the most part, attention has been focused on developed countries. We examine the evolution of India’s labour share in its formal industrial sector from 1983- 2016. Using two datasets corresponding…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Women Workers in India – Labour Force Trends, Occupational Diversification, and Wage Gaps
Understanding the nature of work performed by women in India requires rest of all that we broaden our understanding of what is work, and recognize the different kinds of socially necessary as well as other work. The nature of work and how to capture it…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
Understanding the Performance of India’s Manufacturing Sector- Evidence from Firm Level Data
India’s overall economic performance over the last fifteen years has been outstanding, with the economy growing at an average of over 7% p.a. Growth has been service-led with the services sector accounting for over 60% of GDP growth over the period. Importantly, India’s structural transformation…
-
CSE Working Paper Series
An Approach to the Problem of Employment in India
The challenge of employment in the Indian economy, especially after it growth acceleration since the mid-1980s, relates to its quality rather than its quantity. While employment growth has kept pace with the labour force over the long run, what has grown is informal employment. The…