Whose Job Is it to Worry About Jobs? And What Can the Budget Achieve?

Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will soon present the Union Budget 2026-27. This Budget comes at a time when jobs – their availability and quality – have become a serious concern for the people of India.

We’ve seen protests around recruitment scams and paper leaks, the explosion of gig work, and the Union government and its leaders celebrate the rise of ‘self-employment’ as a success story rather than as an outcome of job scarcity.

Recently, the parliament repealed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and replaced it with a law that has been criticised for dismantling the rights-based approach. The new labour codes brought in by the Union government are also said to make workers’ lives even more precarious.

In this conversation hosted by The Wire in collaboration with the Centre for Financial Accountability, development economist Reetika Khera, historian and trade union activist Akash Bhattacharya, and researchers Nancy Pathak and Asmi Sharma talk about whether the Budget can address these issues – and whether it’s likely to.

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