Urban safety net

Govt needs new ideas to address distress in cities

Recent data prints from both the private and public sector have revealed that there is considerable distress within India’s labour force. This distress has manifested in an increase in the agricultural workforce in the Periodic Labour Force Survey over the previous round in 2017-18 for the first time in the National Sample Survey’s history. This fits with anecdotal evidence of the precarious urban poor leaving in distress due to various blows to the urban sector compounded by the pandemic. It is in this context that a recent recommendation from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on labour, in a report submitted to