The year 2022 was supposed to mark the recovery of the Indian economy from the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns of the preceding two years. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February pushed up prices of food, fuel and fertilizer worldwide. In India consumer price inflation, which had declined to under 5 percent in the September-November period of 2021, has steadily increased, staying above 6 percent throughout 2022.    What happened to rural incomes in 2022? An...

Mint India’s rural borrowers and small businesses owners may have easier access to credit with public sector banks (PSBs) planning to increase financing to these segments, after the Union finance ministry urged lenders to improve their credit-deposit ratio. The C-D ration indicates how much of a banks' deposit base is being utilized for extending loans. The development may help expedite the revival of the rural economy, which is struggling to reach pre-covid...

Livemint.com The automobile industry witnessed a strong start to 2023 with retail sales across segments, including passenger and commercial vehicles, and three-wheelers, surpassing the 2020 pre-pandemic levels in January. However, declining income of rural households continued to impact sentiments of two-wheeler buyers, resulting in 13% lower sales during January from a year ago, vehicle registration data compiled by Federation of Automobile Dealers’ Association (Fada) showed. Vehicle registration was up 14% in the...

Medianama The Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) floated a second tender in December 2022 for implementation and maintenance of a Master Data Management and de- duplication tool for a State Family Database (SFDB) project. The objective is to assign the ‘Makkal ID’— a unique identification number already allotted to the state’s seven crore residents— to different records across departments. The SFDB is projected to be the “single source of truth” of all...

DeCEDA/Qrius 2022 was a milestone year for India. India walked into 2022 with an infectious wave of Covid-19 impacting lakhs of people, the wave receded a few weeks into the year. As hopes for a post-pandemic recovery surged, war in Ukraine brought in new challenges for the economy. With supply chains disrupted, global sanctions imposed on Russia, prices of fuel and food shot up. Inflation, already on a high from pent-up...