The constellation strives to investigate various micro- and macro- issues of contemporary relevance pertaining to Indian economic growth and development. It will bring together meaningful research focusing on aspects of the Indian economy, viz evolution of the economy from a historical perspective, measurement of poverty and inequality in household and individual outcomes, labour market dynamics, and issues relating to Indian agriculture, among others. To achieve this, the constellation attracts economic historians, development economists, applied microeconomists, macroeconomists, and other academics interested in deepening their understanding of the Indian economy through different lenses.
Assistant Professor, Jindal School of Design and Architecture
Associate Professor & Programme Director of Research Conference, Jindal School of Psychology and Counselling
Doctoral Research Fellow at Jindal 91视频 Business School
The "Missing Middle" in firm-size distributions continues to be a key puzzle, particularly in the Indian context. This study revisits the "Missing Middle" phenomenon in Indian manufacturing. Using the latest establishment-level data from the Annual Survey of Industries (2023-2024), and employing a density discontinuity design, Placebo tests and alternative measures of employment, it confirms the presence of a bimodal firm-size distribution in Indian manufacturing, consistent with the missing middle narrative. Further, it empirically evaluates whether the 100-worker threshold under the Industrial Disputes Act encourages firms to deliberately suppress their scale to avoid regulatory costs. The empirical evidence reveals no statistically significant bunching at the critical threshold, along with inconsistent and weak trends in regulated employment categories, indicating that firms do not systematically limit growth to avoid regulatory taxes. Instead, the findings identify the increased use of contract labour as a key margin of adjustment, enabling firms to expand capacity. The results challenge the policy rationale of the recent labour code reforms. It suggests adopting policies to address the structural inefficiencies, going beyond size-based regulatory easing to address the persistent issue of the missing middle in India.
Dr. Abhisek Sur
This is a book project that seeks to analyze the industrial policies adopted in India and suggest a suitable industrial policy for the Indian economy.
Dr. Abhisek Sur
This paper seeks to study the employment trends in rural vis-a-vis urban India before and after the Covid-19 pandemic involving other socio-economic variables, using the CMIE CPHS dataset.
Dr. Abhisek Sur
This study critically analyzes India's current approach to public financing for agriculture and its implications for growth, sustainability, and livelihoods. The objectives of this paper are, to examine the trends of public spending on agriculture and allied sectors; to understand the key priority areas of public spending within agriculture; to analysis the possible impacts of public spending approach on sustainability of the sector. The study examines the public spending patterns at the levels of Union and state governments.
By Gurpreet Singh and Dr. Avanindra Nath Thakur
This project aims at a study of peri-urban tracts that lie somewhere between rurality and urbanity and bring together existing and new research by scholars working in this field as an edited volume. These tracts are crucial nodes of India’s socio-economic transformation in terms of agriculture, industry, services, logistics, and real estate. Issues covered will include, land speculation and transformation, informal service provision, changing patterns of agrarian and rural livelihoods, technical step-arounds in terms of the infrastructure of roads, water, power, and waste. In terms of the latter, the peri-urban presents a new challenge of thinking infrastructural modernity in India that operates after settlement happens, through work-arounds rather than formal arrangements. The volume will be interested in thinking through the peri-urban in its own right and will compile contributions from JGU colleagues as well as scholars outside the university.
Researcher: Dr. Ritam Sengupta
This talk series will bring together prominent scholars and commentators to comment on the evolution of ‘digital capitalism’ in India. We are interested in the manifold manifestations of an Indian variety of digital capitalism and its particular modes of deployment and shaping of state, capital, demographic resources, environmental resources, labour, and consumption practices. A set of panel discussions will try to indicate how digital capitalism has organised itself within the capitalist transformation of the Indian economy in more general terms over the last two decades or so. This is a preliminary invitation and provocation to take up this study as a research project on a fuller scale in subsequent semesters.
Researcher: Dr. Ritam Sengupta
The study seeks to analyse the impact of the India's Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojaan (PMGSY) on household education outcomes in rural India. Using data from NSSO's 64th and 71st education rounds, Census, and SHRUG, we employ difference-in-difference framwork exploiting variation in village road connectivity. Overall, we attempt to explore what happens to education outcomes as access to roads improves for rural households.
Researcher: Dr. Minali Grover