Policy UpdateDebjani Chatterjee Background India is home to one of the world’s largest youth populations, with millions of young people entering the labour market every year. While higher education enrollment has expanded significantly over the past decade, concerns regarding employability…
Unpaid domestic work has long been the invisible backbone of Indian households, sustaining families and enabling the formal economy to function smoothly. Yet, despite its undeniable importance, the contributions of homemakers have historically been undervalued, often dismissed as “non-economic” activity.
The official Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) showed that India's headline retail inflation rose to 3.93% in May 2026, up from 3.48% in April 2026.
Before this reform began, India's statute books contained thousands of provisions where relatively harmless lapses, such as a missed filing deadline, an incorrect entry in a register, or a delayed renewal, could technically expose a citizen or a business owner to criminal prosecution and even jail time. Many of these provisions dated back several decades, several tracing back to colonial-era rules or the licence-raj period, and had never been reviewed in light of changing economic conditions. This created what policymakers described as a climate of unnecessary fear, particularly for small businesses and ordinary citizens who had no intention of committing any real wrongdoing.
For decades, the economic narrative of Jammu and Kashmir was confined to the traditional "Big Three": tourism, horticulture, and handicrafts. While these sectors provided a cultural identity and basic livelihood, they remained highly susceptible to external shocks, such as climatic shifts and seasonal volatility. With more than 3.6 lakh educated young people currently seeking employment in the Union Territory (Labour and Employment Department, 2025), the public sector has reached a saturation point, unable to absorb the influx of talent. Historically, this lack of local opportunity forced a significant "brain drain", where graduates from premier local institutions migrated to other Indian states or abroad to pursue their ambitions.
The YUVA Tourism CLUBS initiative was started by the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, in 2022 as part of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav.
On June 22, 2026, West Bengal's newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, led by Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, presented its first full-year budget for 2026–27, ending over a decade of Trinamool Congress (TMC) rule in the state. Finance Minister Swapan Dasgupta's budget speech had two competing jobs to do: hold on to the welfare architecture built by the outgoing TMC government, which remains politically indispensable in Bengal, while signalling a new emphasis on industrial revival, infrastructure expansion and fiscal discipline (The Daily Pioneer, 2026).