Best of BS Opinion: Urban safety net, Xi's sharp turn to the left & more

Here are the top BS Opinion articles of the day

Here are the best of Business Standard's opinion pieces for Tuesday.

There is considerable distress within India’s labour force. This distress has manifested in an increase in the agricultural workforce in the periodic labour force survey over the previous round in 2017-18, for the first time in national sample survey history. It is in this context that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on labour backed the idea of an urban employment guarantee programme recently. However, there are substantive differences in the pattern of work and distress across rural and urban areas of India that make designing an employment scheme for urban areas relatively difficult, notes our lead editorial. Read here

Chinese foreign policy will acquire a more ideological and less pragmatic character. It will be conducted with more nationalist overtones. This does not bode well for India-China relations, writes former foreign secretary Shyam Saran. Read here

Gurbachan Singh talks about how inflation and oil taxes are affecting consumption. Read here

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Liquidity is no longer a major concern, and that the Bank-NBFC-MFI channel has been de-clogged and from 15th October there would be a special drive to reach out credit to those who need it.”

 

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman