In response to an earlier article ("Growth in Organised Manufacturing Employment in Recent Years", EPW, 12 February 2011), R Nagaraj has questioned two assertions ("Growth in Organised Manufacturing Employment: A Comment", EPW, 19 March 2011). He argues that the recent manufacturing employment boom could be merely a recovery of employment lost over the previous nine years, and that the correlation coeffi cient between employment elasticity and labour reforms index across states is not statistically signifi cant. A response to each of these contestations through additional empirical evidence.