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The Government of India organized over ten thousand student labor camps for the purposes of village development between 1954 and 1965. This camp movement functions as a key to the novel idealizations of youth in the postcolonial world and the shifting development agendas of independent India. The image of the toiling and vigorous camper committed to serving the newly created nation-state came to be constructed as India's model citizen-to-be, and this figure embodies the emergent forms of postcolonial nationalist politics and ideologies of the 1950s and 1960s. This youthful labor force was depicted in the developmentalist imagination of India as literally building and metaphorically embodying the nation-state and its ideologies of physical fitness, secularism, anti-casteism, and national discipline. This article will argue that camp life negotiated a hierarchy of citizens that made the educated youth the agent of development and the villager the object of development. The running of these camps by volunteer movements such as the National Cadet Corps, the Bharat Scouts and Guides, and the Bharat Sevak Samaj brings to light how the developmental apparatus in India worked or did not work in practice for the students and the poorer classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been considerable interest in studying the effect of female labor market outcomes on intrahousehold bargaining. This paper examines the effects of local labor market opportunities in India on a variety of female bargaining characteristics, including domestic violence and intrahousehold discussion of important issues. Specifically, I utilize district-level data on employment in various occupations to calculate an employment shift-share index that proxies gender-specific labor demand. I find that improvements in labor market conditions for women lead to a decrease in perceptions of domestic violence, whereas improvements in predicted demand for male employment have little or negative effects on women's household bargaining power. When disaggregated by indicators of initial bargaining power, women that have lower levels of initial bargaining power either see no effect on bargaining or experience a backlash effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation: The participation rate of women in India's labour force is not only one of the lowest in the world, it has also been declining. To increase women's employment, some observers argue for reducing occupational gender segregation so that more women enter non‐traditional jobs. Purpose: I ask how aspirations for non‐traditional jobs are formed among young women in Delhi. The aim was to enable policy‐makers to foster occupational aspirations for non‐traditional jobs so women could enter jobs considered to be men's work, reducing gender segregation and increasing women's participation in the labour market. Methods and approach: I interviewed 72 young women from low‐income households in Delhi, following a semi‐structured guide. These young women were training either in jobs seen as the preserve of men—taxi drivers, electricians, and electronics mechanics—or in traditionally female work in beauty salons. Findings: Contrary to conventional wisdom, young women's entry into non‐traditional training in Delhi was not a result of their occupational aspirations. Rather, entry into training saw them aspire to the jobs for which they trained. Policy implications: To increase women's entry into jobs dominated by men, policy‐makers do not need to influence young women's occupational aspirations. Instead, they should focus on factors that directly affect job entry—for example, having training centres close to where these young women live—and provide opportunities for young women to train. Traditional concepts of occupational aspirations, generally derived from the global North, do not apply in the same way to young women in India. My study raises questions about these conceptions of aspirations and prompts future studies to assess whether they apply in other parts of the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Till now, studies have determined the existence of process innovation using survey data; however, in this paper, we use secondary data to empirically establish its presence in low-tech industries. Our empirical approach consists of data envelopement analysis in the first step followed by regression analysis in the second step. We use a cross-sectional dataset, i.e., Annual Survey of Industries, 2017–2018 for our study. Our results suggest that among Indian low-tech firms, investment in computer equipment and software is the most popular strategy to trigger process innovation followed by investment in plant and machinery. We find that these factors have a greater impact on firms that export products and import inputs, than on firms that export products but do not import inputs. In other words, the export-import orientation of firms induces a differential impact of these factors on process innovation. One policy implication from the study is that government should encourage and incentivize low-tech firms to improve the capabilities of its labour force. This is the first paper in the Indian context that uses secondary data to empirically determine the existence of process innovation in low-tech industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delivering specialised care for major burns requires a multidisciplinary health workforce. While health systems ‘hardware’ issues, such as shortages of the healthcare workforce and training gaps in burn care are widely acknowledged, there is limited evidence around the systems ‘software’ aspects, such as interest, power dynamics, and relationships that impact the healthcare workforce performance. This study explored challenges faced by the health workforce in burn care to identify issues affecting their performance. Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with a purposively selected sample (n = 31, 18 women and 13 men) of various cadres of the burn care health workforce in Uttar Pradesh, India. Inductive coding and thematic analysis identified three major themes. First, the dynamics within the multidisciplinary team where complex relations, power and normative hierarchy hampered performance. Second, the dynamics between health workers and patients due to the clinical and emotional challenges of dealing with burn injuries and multitasking. Third, dynamics between specialised burn units and broader health systems are narrated in challenges due to inadequate first response and delayed referral from primary care facilities. These findings indicate that burn care health workers in India face multiple challenges that need systemic intervention with a multipronged human resource for health framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender inequality is pervasive in many societies, creating disparities between genders in terms of what they can accomplish and their access to opportunities. Achieving sustainable development necessitates providing equal chances to all, regardless of gender. Despite the remarkable economic progress India has attained, gender inequality is a major concern. Against this backdrop, the current study endeavours to comprehend gender inequality and analyse the extent of gender gap in India using secondary data. India's performance in major gender-related indices paints a stark picture of gender inequality in the country. The study also finds that there exists gender gap in India concerning health, education, political representation and economic participation. Further, the study finds that female labour force participation has steadily declined over the years, raising concerns over the inclusiveness of India's economic growth. The findings of the study provide valuable insights to policymakers to formulate effective policies that promote gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One Health has been coming of age through the G7 and G20 leadership and explicitly referred to in increasing ministerial declarations. Those leaderships, however, have been slow in knitting the One Health approach into the larger systems approach. by understanding the complexity of resilience and health system resilience is one of the key features of pandemic preparedness. Among others, health system strengthening is another key factor that urgently requires much attention in the theme of pandemic preparedness. Here, how the health system strengthening requires more imperative attention in the One Health gambit is discussed in the Indian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home-based work is among the largest forms of employment in the informal economy in India and is overwhelmingly represented by women. Employing a social reproduction framework that reframes what is counted as labor, this article asks how women's unpaid work activities are appropriated as labor in subcontracted home-based work. Applying this analytical framework, it becomes clear that domestic work in the home, often completed by women, is needed and exploited in this production process as a result of gendered constructs of care. The contribution considers how unpaid work is directly appropriated by capital as surplus value. The context of informal work is key here because of the irregular and fragmented production process, the space where work occurs, and the use of unpaid family workers. The goal of this research is to offer empirical evidence that broadens analytical perspectives to account for the context of informality in the Global South. HIGHLIGHTS Subcontracted home-based work in India relies on a gendered, fragmented, and precarious labor force. Unpaid caregiving and household work directly contributes to profit-making. Western analytical concepts of the economy need to be reexamined in the context of the postcolonial informal economies. Research tools that measure economic participation need to capture how unpaid activities directly or indirectly contribute to economic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The statement discusses Jonathan Parry's recent monograph, Classes of Labour, and in particular his "labour aristocracy" thesis of the most privileged sections of India's workforces that had been widely accepted in the social sciences in the 1970s but that had later been discarded. It is argued that the ethnography of an industrial town in Central India he presents in the monograph convincingly demonstrates that the relative privileges of public-sector employment have fostered the bifurcation of the town's industrial workers into two major distinct classes with different life chances, different attitudes to caste, and with often antagonistic political interests. Classes of Labour also demonstrates that Giddens' concept of "class structuration" offers a suitable theoretical grounding for identifying the major fault lines and driving forces of class formation in his case study but also for a controlled comparison between case studies across India and beyond. This statement moreover argues that this approach conceives of class as an historical, dynamic object, and it asks whether the current crises of class reproduction in the times of jobless growth might provoke a major change in the structuration of classes in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review discusses Jonathan Parry's 2020 monograph Classes of Labour in the context of the author's career trajectory since the 1990s. The review critiques the conceptual framework with which the book understands class relations, and notes that the breadth of the study may be daunting for some readers. However, the review characterises the book as an artisanal masterpiece that shows an ethnographer working at the very peak of their abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Indian government initiated several skill development policies and different types of vocational education and training (VET). Yet the participation in skill education is low because of poor labour market outcomes. This paper aims to calculate returns to skill education to understand the type of training that will have better labour market outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper nationally representative data from the periodic labour force survey (PLFS), collected by the national sample survey office for 2017–2018, are used to estimate the returns to formal and non-formal VET obtained (after different levels of general education) with the help of Heckman's two-stage method. Findings: Nearly 8% of the working-age population has received some form of VET (mostly non-formal), generating poor returns. For the overall population, formal on-job training (OJT) and full-time VET influence wage positively and significantly. Full-time VET obtained after secondary and below levels of education generates positive returns, whereas part-time VET is profitable only to those without formal education. At the graduate level, technical education obtained along with VET is associated with better wages. Originality/value: In India where a considerable proportion of the workforce is employed in the informal sector, different types of skill training like full-time, part-time and OJT influence labour market outcomes. This finding has policy implication for countries with large informal sector and calls for further research in such countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low rates of caesarean delivery (CD) (<10%) hinder access to a lifesaving procedure for the most vulnerable populations in low-resource settings, but there is a paucity of data regarding which factors contribute most to CD rates. We aimed to determine caesarean delivery rates at Bihar's first referral units (FRUs) stratified by facility level (regional, sub-district, district). The secondary aim was to identify facility-level factors associated with caesarean delivery rates. This cross-sectional study used open-source national datasets from government FRUs in Bihar, India, from April 2018–March 2019. Multivariate Poisson regression analysed association of infrastructure and workforce factors with CD rates. Of 546,444 deliveries conducted at 149 FRUs, 16961 were CDs, yielding a state-wide FRU CD of 3.1%. There were 67 (45%) regional hospitals, 45 (30%) sub-district hospitals, and 37 (25%) district hospitals. Sixty-one percent of FRUs qualified as having intact infrastructure, 84% had a functioning operating room, but only 7% were LaQshya (Labour Room Quality Improvement Initiative) certified. Considering workforce, 58% had an obstetrician-gynaecologist (range 0–10), 39% had an anaesthetist (range 0–5), and 35% had a provider trained in Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC) (range 0–4) through a task-sharing initiative. The majority of regional hospitals lack the essential workforce and infrastructure to perform CDs. Multivariate regression including all FRUs performing deliveries demonstrated that presence of a functioning operating room (IRR = 21.0, 95%CI 7.9–55.8, p < 0.001) and the number of obstetrician-gynaecologists (IRR = 1.3, 95%CI 1.1–1.4, p = 0.001) and EmOCs (IRR = 1.6, 95%CI 1.3–1.9, p < 0.001) were associated with facility-level CD rates. Only 3.1% of the institutional childbirths in Bihar's FRUs were by CD. The presence of a functional operating room, obstetrician, and task-sharing provider (EmOC) was strongly associated with CD. These factors may represent initial investment priorities for scaling up CD rates in Bihar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While India is entering the period of demographic dividend, female labour participation rates remain very low. This paper aims to provide the very first labour force projections for India and its regions up to the year 2060. Projections are achieved using a discrete-time microsimulation model in which changes in population size and composition come from the interaction between demographic characteristics, educational attainment, and secular tendencies. Labour force participation rates are estimated at the individual level using personal characteristics as predictors. Results show that under constant labour force participation rates, the labour force dependency ratio (non-workers/workers) is very unlikely to attain favourable levels, which compromises the potential demographic dividend that the country could gain from its favourable age-structure. At the subnational level, the forecast yields the most favourable dependency ratio in 2060 in the regions that combine both a low-age dependency ratio and a higher participation of women. Results moreover suggest that female labour force participation is a better driver of the labour force dependency ratio than the age composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite income growth, fertility decline, and educational expansion, female labour force participation in rural India dropped precipitously over the last decade. Nation-wide individual-level data allow us to explore if random reservation of village leadership for females affected women's access to job opportunities, their demand for participation in the labour force, and income as well as intra-household bargaining in the short-and medium term. Gender reservation of local leadership affected female but not male participation in public works and regular labour markets, their income, and their influence on key household decisions with a lag, suggesting that such reservation affected social norms and stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale, aims and objectives: A key consideration in designing scalable solutions for improving global mental health involves balancing the need for interventions to be uncomplicated for mental health workers (MHWs) and the need for the intervention to be widely applicable to many clients. Often these needs are in competition, since interventions are routinely simplified by removing procedures or reducing their dynamic responsivity, which in turn lowers their overall utility in serving large, clinically diverse populations. The principal aim of this pilot study involved evaluating the feasibility and acceptability of a brief strategy designed to delegate problem classification and practice selection to MHWs operating within a flexible, modular, cognitive behavioural protocol. A secondary aim involved gathering data on which to base a hypothesis regarding the potential effectiveness of this strategy. Method: Within an open trial, an educationally diverse sample of local MHWs in India (N = 18) reviewed fictional case vignettes, classified mental health problems, and then selected practices before and after a two‐hour training that included a one‐page decision‐making resource. Feasibility was measured by assessing the integrity of the study protocol and training, the measurement and administration of questionnaires as well as study recruitment and completion. Acceptability of the intervention was measured by MHW‐perceived performance, ease of use, value, importance, and intention for continued use. Decision‐making accuracy was assessed by comparing MHWs' clinical decisions with criteria established through consensus among psychologists with expertise in modular protocols. Results: Results suggested high feasibility and acceptability on all metrics. Secondary analysis revealed that MHW's decision‐making accuracy and confidence also significantly improved, providing a basis for the hypothesis that this brief approach is useful for building MHW capacity in low‐resource settings. Conclusion: Overall these findings provide initial support for these methods and potential training outcomes to test within a larger, randomized controlled trial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversifying household livelihoods and increasing women's labor force participation is a major developmental challenge in South Asia. Multi-sectoral development approaches can provide better economic opportunities and women's employment simultaneously. This study provides evidence on the livelihoods and women's labor supply impacts of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), a $5.1 billion livelihoods initiative. The study matches primary data from 4,202 households and 726 villages using the 2011 Population Census and the 2012 Socio-Economic and Caste Census. The instrumental variable estimates suggest that participation in NRLM is associated with an improvement in the number of household livelihoods by 0.707, livelihood diversification by 0.13σ, and women's working participation rate (WPR) by 15.4 percent. The study identifies two sets of channels, namely, formation of productive assets and access to formal credit, through which NRLM influenced livelihoods and women's WPR. Heterogeneous program effects suggest that women in socially and economically deprived households benefitted most. HIGHLIGHTS The study highlights India's National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), the world's largest livelihoods initiative. NRLM improved opportunities for women's gainful employment in farm and nonfarm productive activities. The program's impact reflects the efficacy of multi-sectoral development interventions. It relies on a unique multi-sectoral approach that mobilizes rural poor women into SHGs and their federations. The study argues for interventions that influence gender roles in the context of rural growth and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While trade opening is generally welfare enhancing, it requires a reallocation of capital and labor across sectors and firms. The empirical evidence on how this reallocation works is still relatively thin. Our paper contributes to this literature by studying how the labor's share of income adjusted due to trade liberalization in India's formal manufacturing sector during the period 1998–99 to 2007–08. Our baseline model suggests that a fall in output tariffs led to an increase in the labor share while a fall in input tariffs brought about a decrease in labor share. However, once we control for factor and technology intensity of production, we find that this differential impact of tariff reduction on labor share aligns with these classifications. Tariff liberalization led to a decline in labor share in technology and capital-intensive sectors while in labor-intensive and low-tech sectors it brought about an increase. This suggests that following trade opening, demand for labor improved in labor-intensive and low-tech sectors but deteriorated in capital-intensive and high-tech sectors. India's manufacturing bias towards the latter explains the overall decline in labor share in the post-reform period. Furthermore, we find that labor adjustment occurred more efficiently in states with flexible labor laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper re-focuses attention on the big picture question of the persistently low level of female labour force participation in India. • We show how attention on a binary indicator (in the labour force or out of it) misses a crucial aspect of women's economic/productive work. • We suggest that women's work in developing countries should be viewed in terms of at least three categories. • We find that the social norm that places the responsibility of domestic chores exclusively on women is primarily responsible for women's inability to participate in paid work. • We demonstrate the existence of 'virtuous cycles' within families: a history of working women in the family increases the probability of the woman being in paid work. Based on primary data from a large household survey in seven districts in West Bengal in India, this paper analyses the reasons underlying low labor force participation of women. In developing countries, women who are engaged in unpaid economic work in family enterprises are often not counted as workers, whereas the men are. We show that for women, not being in paid work is not synonymous with not being in the labour force. Women are often involved in expenditure saving activities i.e. productive work within the family, over and above domestic chores and care work. We document the fuzziness of the boundary between domestic work and unpaid (and therefore invisible) productive work that leads to mismeasurement of women's work and suggest methods to improve measurement. Counting women's expenditure-saving activities yields a substantially higher estimate of women's participation in economic work. On social norms, we show that religion and visible markers such as veiling are not significant determinants of the probability of being in paid work. We find that being primarily responsible for domestic chores lowers the probability of "working", after accounting for all the conventional factors. Our data shows substantial unmet demand for paid work. Given that women are primarily responsible for domestic chores, we find that women express a demand for work that would be compatible with household chores. We demonstrate the existence of 'virtuous cycles' within families: a history of working women in the family (mother or mother-in-law ever worked) increases the probability of being in paid work between 18 and 21 percentage points. This suggests that the positive effects of increasing women's labour force participation today are likely to have positive multiplier effects on the prospects for work in future generations of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Rural India has a severe shortage of human resources for health (HRH). The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) deploys HRH in the rural public health system to tackle shortages. Sanctioning under NRHM does not account for workload resulting in inadequate and inequitable HRH allocation. The Workforce Indicators of Staffing Needs (WISN) approach can identify shortages and inform appropriate sanctioning norms. India currently lacks nationally relevant WISN estimates. We used existing data and modelling techniques to synthesize such estimates.Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of existing survey data for 93 facilities from 5 states over 8 years to create WISN calculations for HRH cadres at primary and community health centres (PHCs and CHCs) in rural areas. We modelled nationally representative average WISN-based requirements for specialist doctors at CHCs, general doctors and nurses at PHCs and CHCs. For 2019, we calculated national and state-level overall and per-centre WISN differences and ratios to depict shortage and workload pressure. We checked correlations between WISN ratios for cadres at a given centre-type to assess joint workload pressure. We evaluated the gaps between WISN-based requirements and sanctioned posts to investigate suboptimal sanctioning through concordance analysis and difference comparisons.Results: In 2019, at the national-level, WISN differences depicted workforce shortages for all considered HRH cadres. WISN ratios showed that nurses at PHCs and CHCs, and all specialist doctors at CHCs had very high workload pressure. States with more workload on PHC-doctors also had more workload on PHC-nurses depicting an augmenting or compounding effect on workload pressure across cadres. A similar result was seen for CHC-specialist pairs-physicians and surgeons, physicians and paediatricians, and paediatricians and obstetricians-gynaecologists. We found poor concordance between current sanctioning norms and WISN-based requirements with all cadres facing under-sanctioning. We also present across-state variations in workforce problems, workload pressure and sanctioning problems.Conclusion: We demonstrate the use of WISN calculations based on available data and modelling techniques for national-level estimation. Our findings suggest prioritising nurses and specialists in the rural public health system and updating the existing sanctioning norms based on workload assessments. Workload-based rural HRH deployment can ensure adequate availability and optimal distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study on spatial analysis of child labour in India is a macro level analysis on child labour using the census data, 2011 of Government of India. The population census which is conducted once in 10 years only provides district level data on work-force distribution. The study has spatial analysis of child labour in the age group of 5–14 years in India. To assess the magnitude of the children in the labour force, district level data of Census 2011 has been used in the study. The study has made an attempt to identify the districts where there is high level of children in the labour force. This paper aims to estimate the magnitude and trends of children's workforce participation using the census data as it is the only data base, which is available at the district level since 1961 onwards. The study has made an attempt to identify the clustering of child labour across districts in India and how child labour is clustered by different background characteristics. Design/methodology/approach: The study has used ArcGIS software package, GeoDa software and local indicator of spatial association test. Findings: The findings of study reveal that the proportion of rural, total fertility rate (TFR) and poverty headcount ratio is positively associated, whereas female literacy and the pupil-teacher ratio are negatively associated with child labour. It suggests that in the hot-spot areas and areas where there is a high prevalence of child labour, there is need to increase the teacher's number at the school level to improve the teacher-pupil ratio and also suggested to promote the female education, promote family planning practices to reduce TFR in those areas for reducing the incidences of child labour. Research limitations/implications: The study also recommends that the incidences of child labour can be controlled by a comprehensive holistic action plan with the active participation of social workers. Practical implications: The promulgation of effective legislation, active involvement of judiciary and police, political will, effective poverty alleviation and income generation programmes, sensitisation of parents, corporates and media can play effective role in mitigating the incidences of child labour in India. To achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) adopted by world leaders in 2015 to eradicate child labour in all its forms by 2025. Social implications: The study aims to achieve the SDGs adopted by world leaders in 2015 to eradicate child labour in all its forms by 2025. Originality/value: The study is purely original and there are no such studies in Indian context by using the latest software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Regulation is a critical function in the governance of health workforces. In many countries, regulatory councils for health professionals guide the development and implementation of health workforce policy, but struggle to perform their responsibilities, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Few studies have analyzed the influence of colonialism on modern-day regulatory policy for health workforces in LMICs. Drawing on the example of regulatory policy from India, the goals of this paper is to uncover and highlight the colonial legacies of persistent challenges in medical education and practice within the country, and provide lessons for regulatory policy in India and other LMICs.Main Body: Drawing on peer-reviewed and gray literature, this paper explores the colonial origins of the regulation of medical education and practice in India. We describe three major aspects: (1) Evolution of the structure of the apex regulatory council for doctors-the Medical Council of India (MCI); (2) Reciprocity of medical qualifications between the MCI and the General Medical Council (GMC) in the UK following independence from Britain; (3) Regulatory imbalances between doctors and other cadres, and between biomedicine and Indian systems of medicine.Conclusions: Challenges in medical education and professional regulation remain a major obstacle to improve the availability, retention and quality of health workers in India and many other LMICs. We conclude that the colonial origins of regulatory policy in India provide critical insight into contemporary debates regarding reform. From a policy perspective, we need to carefully interrogate why our existing policies are framed in particular ways, and consider whether that framing continues to suit our needs in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Crime exacerbates gender gaps in labour force participation. • Increase in crime increases men's labour force participation. • Increase in crime decreases women's labour force participation. • These effects are particularly significant for activity away from their residence. • These results are robust to panel data heterogeneity and dynamics. Increased crime incidents, particularly crime against women, raise security concerns and increase the non-pecuniary cost of travelling, thus deterring women from working away from their dwelling. This raises the possibility that if crime reduces women's labour force participation, men may compensate for the loss of income by increasing their participation in the labour force. Therefore, an increase in crime can explain and exacerbate the existing gender gaps in labour force participation. We investigated the possible asymmetric impact of crime on the labour force participation rates of men and women in India. We combined labour market data from NSS surveys on employment and unemployment and crime statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau for a panel of India's 571 districts from 2000 to 2012. We found that men's labour force participation increased or remained unimpacted by an increase in crime, while an increase in crime decreased women's labour force participation, especially in work away from their residence. These contrasting effects of crime on labour force participation rates are robust to fixed and between effects across districts, the dynamic nature of the relationship between variables, and heterogeneity in the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Despite only small changes in principal usual activity status (the conventional measure of labour force participation rates in India) there were large declines in minutes worked (based on the System of National Accounts definition) in India between 1998 and 2019 for the six states with comparable time-use data. • For women, minutes of work fell 66 min per day overall and minutes of paid work fell 39 min per day. There was little change in urban areas so this is entirely driven by decreases in work in rural areas. • For men, minutes of work fell 51 min per day overall. Men in rural and urban areas experienced even larger decreases in paid work than women (104 min and 147 min per day respectively) but compensated for this with large increases in time spent in self-employment. • Domestic work barely changed for rural women and decreased for urban women, leading to substantial gains in leisure for women. Leisure for men also increased but by less, leading to a reduction in the male–female leisure gap from 51 min in 1998 to 26 min by 2019. • The reduction in work (and increase in leisure) for rural women occurred within all six states, within all caste/religious groups, and for all levels of education. For men the reductions in work (and increases in leisure) are concentrated among low income and low education households. I provide evidence on long-run changes in women's work for six Indian states common to the 1998–99 and 2019 time-use surveys. Rural women experienced large decreases in work time (especially paid work) but urban women did not. Men experienced larger declines in paid work but partly compensated with greater self-employment. Changes in self-reported "principal usual activity status" that are typically used to measure labour force participation do not provide an accurate measure of these changes in work time. Declining work for rural women is observed regardless of self-reported usual activity status, education level, caste/religious group, or state. Leisure time for women increased, reducing the gender-gap in leisure by 50%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between economic mobility and the practice of female seclusion in Indian households using the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), a nationally representative panel survey. Women from households which became wealthier between survey waves were found to have increased restrictions on their physical mobility as well as higher odds of practicing head-covering or purdah. These results held even after the inclusion of controls for changes in household composition, health of the woman, and her labor force participation. Stratified fixed effects regression analyses revealed that mobility-induced female seclusion was primarily practiced in poorer communities, in rural areas, and among the less-educated. The findings suggest that economically mobile households may use female seclusion as a strategy to signal household status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]