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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Here's What We Know About COVID's Impact on India's Workers – and What We Can Do About it -Rosa Abraham and Amit Basole

Here's What We Know About COVID's Impact on India's Workers – and What We Can Do About it -Rosa Abraham and Amit Basole

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published Published on Jul 3, 2021   modified Modified on Jul 7, 2021

-TheWire.in

The pandemic disproportionately impacted women and young workers.

A school bus driver is struggling to make ends meet driving a tempo for hire, purchased with an informal loan; a five-star chef is volunteering for an NGO preparing cooked meals for distribution in the slums of Bangalore; and an MCA degree-holder is working as a door-to-door water purifier technician. These and many more such anecdotes give us a glimpse into the disruption that COVID-19 has caused in India’s labour markets.

The first wave and its associated containment measures caused large-scale job losses, a sharp rise in inequality and poverty, and an increase in indebtedness and hunger. For particularly vulnerable groups such as migrant workers and the homeless, it was nothing short of a humanitarian disaster.

Our report, State of Working India 2021 – One year of Covid-19, documents the experience of households and workers in the last year, beginning with the aftermath of the national lockdown of 2020. The lockdown increased inequality dramatically because incomes were wiped out almost completely at the bottom of the distribution. As per data from the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE), an average four-member household at the bottom of the income distribution lost Rs 15,700 (just over two months of income). Several independent surveys also reveal sharp drops in income ranging from 40% to over 80% for informal sector workers, not only during the lockdown but even in the subsequent months.

Households coped by selling assets or borrowing with debts incurred ranging from two to six times households’ earnings. For instance, the Covid-19 Livelihoods Survey of vulnerable households, conducted by Azim Premji University, found that the poorest households (bottom 25%) had debt burdens nearly four times their monthly household income. This ratio was only 1.4 for the more well-to-do households. This increased indebtedness suggests an exacerbation of inequalities that could persist into the future. Rising fuel and food prices in recent months will only worsen household budgets, particularly for the poor.

As per CMIE data, employment had returned almost to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2020, but incomes remained significantly depressed and around 15 million workers still remained out of work (Figure 1). Thus when the second wave hit, households had not fully recovered from the shock of the first wave. As the worst of the health impacts of the second wave recede, the question of livelihoods remains urgent. 

Please click here to read more. 


TheWire.in, 3 July, 2021, https://thewire.in/labour/covid-19-india-impact-workers


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