The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) is pleased to invite you to the second seminar in our Work in Transition Series, titled “Everyday Grammar of Work: What workers’ everyday experiences reveal about work, informality, and policy”. The event will feature a conversation between Shrayana Bhattacharya, writer and economist and Yamini Aiyar, Visiting Senior Fellow, CSEP.

The seminar will be held on Thursday, August 13, 2026, from 4:00 to 5:30 pm (IST) at the CSEP Auditorium, 6, Dr Jose P Rizal Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 110021.

Please note that this is an in-person event only. If you are in Delhi on the day, we invite you to join us for what promises to be a thought-provoking discussion. The event will be available on the CSEP website and YouTube channel upon completion.

Register here to attend

About the event

Policy discussions on work often begin with data. This conversation begins with people. Rooted in ethnographic research, a conversation between Yamini Aiyar and Shrayana Bhattacharya will explore how workers experience employment, informality, and mobility in their everyday lives. By grounding policy in lived experience, the discussion considers what more worker-centred frameworks for labour and social protection might look like.

About the Initiative – Work in Transition: Informality and Structural Change in India

It is a well-known reality that the bulk of India works in the informal economy. In recent years, several top-down policy efforts have been undertaken to “formalize” the economy including GST, greater digitization (digital payments and e-shram) and most recently the move toward de-regulation via the new labour codes. Added to this, disruptive shifts like the expansion of the gig-workers and increased rural-urban migration (both intra-state and inter-state) have created a new kind of informality in labour markets. Third, the expansion of technology enabled cash transfers have created new policy levers for building social protection systems. Together these changes raise critical questions about the evolving relationship between the state, firms, and workers in India. They are also a push to understand whether existing policy levers are fit to purpose, given the rapid pace of change in labour markets. Work in Transition: Informality and Structural Change in India, is a CSEP initiative that will seek to develop a deeper understanding of these labour market dynamics.

The inaugural seminar in this series, titled “India’s Labour Productivity Puzzle”, is scheduled to be held on Friday, August 7, 2026 at CSEP.

Speakers

Shrayana Bhattacharya

Shrayana Bhattacharya is a Senior Economist with the World Bank’s Social Protection team in South Asia, working with government agencies to strengthen social safety nets and economic inclusion programs in India and Bangladesh. Trained in development economics at Delhi University and Harvard Kennedy School, she led various research projects with SEWA Union on women working in the Indian informal economy before joining the World Bank in 2013. Based on fifteen years of research, her debut book of non-fiction Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence was published in India (2021) and Pakistan (2022). She has won several prizes for her writing and was also shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2023.

Yamini Aiyar

Yamini Aiyar is a Visiting Senior Fellow, CSEP. She is also Senior Visiting Fellow, Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia and Watson Institute, Brown University, where she is working on a comparison of welfare states in the Global South. Previously, she was President and Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Research, a leading multidisciplinary think tank in New Delhi, from 2017-2024. Prior to becoming President, she set up the Accountability Initiative, known for its work on governance, social accountability and expenditure tracking. Yamini’s research spans the fields of contemporary politics, state capacity, welfare policy, federalism and India’s political economy. Her latest book, Lessons in State Capacity from Delhi Schools, was published by Oxford University Press in December 2024. Yamini has published widely in academic and current affairs journals as well as the popular press, including in the Economist, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Democracy, Hindustan Times, Deccan Herald, and The Hindu.

All content reflects the individual views of the speakers. The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) does not hold an institutional view on any subject.

Please contact Gurmeet Kaur at GKaur@csep.org for general queries and Ayesha Manocha at AManocha@csep.org for media queries.