Labour Economy Development

Academic article

Covid-19 and the Indian Economy: The Debate about a Wage-led Recovery

The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered multiple crises – of health, economy, and livelihoods — in India. The restoration of at least a part of the incomes lost by the overwhelmingly informal workforce in the country during the lockdown period should be a priority for the government.India’s policy makers should reconsider the faith they have put on neoclassical economic ideas, which have slowed down employment growth and left millions of people with little access to basic health or education facilities. The pandemic should be an opportunity to build in India an effective and publicly provided social security system as well as rural infrastructure and research institutions.

Refer to this article:

Thomas, Jayan Jose (2022) ‘Covid-19 and the Indian economy: the debate about a wage-led recovery’ in Lazzarini, A. and Melnik, D. (eds.) (2022) Economists and COVID-19 – Ideas, Theories and Policies During the Pandemic, Springer pp. 27-46.

Working Paper

Labour and Industrialization: Can India and China Learn from each other?

The per capita incomes of China and India were at similar levels until the early 1990s, but by 2019, the per capita income of China rose to 2.4 times the corresponding Indian level. The growing distance between these two countries in economic and human development is, to a large extent, on account of the differences with respect to their success in industrialization. China’s industrialization — especially through the Township and Village Enterprises during the 1980s — has been remarkably effective in absorbing the increases in the working-age population in that country. China responded to the global financial crisis in 2008 with massive investments in infrastructure and new technologies, while investment rates fell sharply in India during the same period. The employment challenge that India faces can be resolved only with well-directed strategies and industrial policies and with a much greater role for the state in industrial development.