Free exchange | The three-year nap

摘要

HAS ANY country ever lost as many jobs as India shed in April? After the government imposed a strict lockdown on March 24th, employment fell by 114m in the following month, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a research firm. The number, it said, was "mind-boggling". It has also been mind-concentrating. Although employment has begun to recover, the need to create jobs has prompted several Indian states to suspend many of the country's compendious labour regulations. These strictures include over 40 central laws and about 100 state ones dictating how employers should pay workers, contribute to their pensions, guard them from injury, settle their grievances and lay them off.