It's not just about knees.

"Agriculture and allied sectors account for about 18% of the Indian economy, but around 40% of employment," wrote Prof Mahambare, Prof Dhanaraj and Sharma. Analysing workers in prime age group of 20-59 years, "Our estimates show that there has been a dramatic reduction in prime working-age Indians engaged in agriculture, with their share falling to 23.3% in 2018-19 from 40% in 2004-05." "There was an even sharper decline in the share of young adults (20-29 years) who work in agriculture." As a country develops, workers shift from agriculture to industries which offer sustained employment and higher wages. "However, what is particular to the Indian experience is that this decline is not mirrored in a corresponding increase in the proportion of prime-age adults taking up non-farm jobs. Rather, it is reflected in an increase in the share of prime adults leaving the labor market." Lack of employment leads to crime. "Unemployed, illiterate, school drop-outs, arrested for the first time -- these are common threads that connect almost every person arrested for snatching in Delhi since 2018, highlighting how one of the most serious concerns on the streets of the national capital is also its biggest gateway to crime," reported Hindustan Times. Snatching is forcible theft of property of pedestrians. In India, gold chains around their necks and handbags make women easy targets for such criminals. So brazen have they become that a woman was stabbed to death for resisting efforts to snatch her chain. Ironically, although women seem to be victims of unemployed young men, India has one of the highest unemployment among women. At 21%, labor force participation rate (LFPR) of women in India is less than that of Afghanistan, Somalia and Pakistan, wrote Udit Misra. "In other words, 79% of Indian women (aged 15 years and above) do not even seek work." The fall in the LFPR for women is mainly due to withdrawal of rural women from the labor force. "A member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, Mr (Chief Minister of Uttarakhand Tirath Singh) Rawat went on to describe ripped jeans as clothing that both caused and was symptomatic of moral turpitude (among women) and criticised parents for allowing, their children, especially girls, to wear them," reported Geeta Pandey on BBC. "The overall filings of ITRs (income tax returns) including individuals, corporates and businesses shrank 6.5 percent in FY20," reported The Indian Express. FY20 means 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020, before the effect of the coronavirus pandemic. "The coronavirus pandemic may have shrunk India's middle-class population by 32 million and driven 75 million below the poverty line in 2020, a Pew Research report said," wrote Asit Ranjan Misra. If our mothers, sisters and daughters are unhappy it is not surprising that "India has been ranked 139 out of 149 countries in the list of UN World Happiness Report 2021 released on Friday which is topped by Finland." Most people are miserable, women in greater proportion.