In this article, Jayati Ghosh attempts to extend Krishna Bharadwaj’s insight on interlinked rural markets to the analysis of the interlinkages between paid and unpaid economic activities; in other words, between work and employment. Specifically, Jayati Ghosh argues that the gendered division of labour in India creates much greater involvement in unpaid labour for women, which in turn has direct and pervasive implications for their involvement in paid employment. Indeed, the interlinkage between the two is so profound that it is impossible to understand trends in one without assessing trends in the other.

* This article was originally published in The Indian Economic Journal on August 18, 2021.