Articles by Amit Basole

The Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017­–18 data 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 been published. In this paper, we show that some of the variations in estimates can be attributed to how populations are projected based on data from Census 2011. We estimate the change in employment using the cohort–component method of population projection. We show that for men, the total employment rose, but the increase fell far short of the increase in the working age population. For women, employment fell. The decline was concentrated among women engaged in part-time or occasional work in agriculture and construction.

The Indian manufacturing sector has not increased its share in output or employment along expected lines. The aggregate trends in this sector at the 3-digit level of the National Industrial Classification from 1983 to 2017 are investigated here. Using data from the Annual Survey of Industries obtained from theEPWRFITS, it identifies three sub-periods within the overall period: 1988–96, 1996–2006, and 2006–17. A shift-share decomposition is used to show that most of the decline in the labour to capital ratio can be explained by within-industry changes. Finally, industries are analysed with respect to their capacity to deliver job and wage growth.

The Web of Freedom: J C Kumarappa and Gandhi’s Struggle for Economic Justice by Venu Madhav Govindu and Deepak Malghan; New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016; pp 388, ₹817.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about economic inequality in India during the post-reform period. It analyses consumption inequality through the hitherto neglected lens of non-food expenditure. Using household level consumption expenditure data from the quinquennial "thick" rounds of the National Sample Survey, the paper shows that inequality within food and non-food groups has declined, even as overall expenditure inequality has increased over time. The analysis suggests that the rise in overall expenditure inequality is due to the increased weight in the household budget of non-food spending, which tends to be more unequal than food spending. The paper also shows that inequality is very different across broad non-food items. Durables, education, healthcare, and consumer services show the most rapid increases in real expenditure, and also display the highest levels of inequality. Finally, the paper offers some possible mechanisms for this phenomenon and suggests policy measures to deal with this form of inequality.

This paper uses aggregate-level data, as well as case-studies, to trace the evolution of some key structural features of the Indian economy, relating both to the agricultural and the informal industrial sector. These aggregate trends are used to infer (a) the dominant relations of production under which the vast majority of the Indian working people labour, and (b) the predominant ways in which the surplus labour of the direct producers is appropriated by the dominant classes. This is Part II of the paper covering the "informal" industrial sector; Part I, on agriculture, appeared last week.