The gig economy; legal system; Jack of all knowledge; Linux install; Everything is everything, Ep5,6
The gig economy in the Indian labour market
Gig work is an important new phenomenon in the urban labour market. Many business models have emerged which source labour supply through mobile phones, and there will be more such process innovation in the future. Some people worry about the lack of labour regulation of these arrangements. In the Business Standard yesterday, Maitreesh Ghatak and I have an article Why gig work matters.
We view gig work as a computer-assisted extension of the traditional informal arrangements in the Indian labour market, with many interesting consequences. It can help address the most important problem of the labour market, the low value of the labour force participation (LFP) rate, particularly with women, the elderly and persons with disabilities. The gig economy is like an urban employment guarantee: it improves the safety net for the poor. It helps create conditions for more rural to urban migration.
On a related note, Renuka Sane has written in The Print today about the difficulties of the traditional “welfare fund” idea being put into play by the state of Rajasthan.
Legal system research
On 17 June, PUCAR had organised a roundtable Empowering Litigants through Data on Courts. There is a program design and a youtube playlist.
We have initiated a monthly seminar series, each featuring a few talks from the frontier. Here is the first and the second.
One of the nice concepts in building courts and tribunals is to see that the operations of a court is a process engineering problem, one that is distinct from the high intellectual work that goes into judging a case. This idea was in the Ministry of Finance `Task force on establishment of the Financial Sector Appellate Tribunal’ chaired by N. K. Sodhi (2014), and was built into the widely noticed paper: How to Modernise the Working of Courts and Tribunals in India, Pratik Datta, Mehtab Hans, Mayank Mishra, Ila Patnaik, Prasanth Regy, Shubho Roy, Sanhita Sapatnekar, Ajay Shah, Ashok Pal Singh, Somasekhar Sundaresan. NIPFP working paper 258, March 2019.
We now have a video of the paper talk, with some extensions on the puzzles in going from here to there. (This was part of the Indian Legal System Reform Seminar #1 described above).
An episode of Jack of all knowledge
Jack of all knowledge is Divyanshu Dembi’s podcast. He released an episode with me, which may interest many young people.
A conservative path to get to a fully working Linux computer
Linux is a great operating system, but it’s often hard to get it fully working on a new computer. I wrote an article on The Leap Blog on 25 July 2023, A conservative path to get to a fully working Linux computer, where I summarise two familiar mechanisms to get this done, and offer a third one.
Episodes 5,6 of Everything is everything
Episode 5, “My hero, Oppenheimer”, 28 July, has chapters —
Introduction: Christopher Nolan -- An Auteur at Scale;
My Hero, Oppenheimer;
Ajay recommends the ultimate book on the atomic bomb; and
Amit recommends a masterpiece that is the biography of a man and a city -- and how power corrupts.
Episode 6, “The incredible insights of Bastiat and Hayek“, 4 August, has chapters —
That which is seen and that which is not seen — Frederic Bastiat;
The use of knowledge in society — Friedrich Hayek;
Ajay recommends; and
Amit recommends.