A recent report by Christian Aid -- an international NGO based out of London -- says that the world was not just hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it actually faced massive loss of lives and livelihoods owing to the intensification of the ongoing climate crisis. Climate-related disasters varied from fires in Australia and the United States, floods in China, India and Japan to storms in Europe and the...
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Hit By Indebtedness and Suicides, Punjab Farmers Worry New Laws Will Make Things Worse -Pawanjot Kaur
-TheWire.in Researchers have found that small and marginal farmers and Dalit landless labourers are worst affected by the region's agrarian distress. Sangrur/Patiala (Punjab): In the villages of Punjab, strike a conversation on farming expenses with anyone, and they will say, “Karja tan hai hi (Of course, we have taken loans).” It’s these loans – from both institutional and non-institutional sources – that largely help the rural economy run in the state. But...
More »The anatomy of a stock market bubble staring India in the face -Vivek Kaul
-Livemint.com Easily buyable shares, a gush of cheap money and a burst of speculation have over-inflated prices On 18 December, the price to earnings (PE) ratio of the Nifty 50 stock market index reached an all-time high of 37.84. This was around 87% higher than the average PE ratio of 20.26 since 1 January 1999. The PE ratios of the Nifty 50 and other broader indices continue to remain at extremely high levels....
More »The country should worry about further worsening of economic inequality in the post-COVID period
The World Economic Outlook – a bi-annual publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -- released in October 2020 has anticipated that the economic progress made by the countries since the 1990s to reduce poverty would be turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of that, economic disparity would rise too in the post-COVID world because the crisis has disproportionately impacted women, informal sector workers and people with...
More »Research shows intermediaries’ role is misunderstood. Local market realities more at play -Shoumitro Chatterjee, Mekhala Krishnamurthy, Devesh Kapur and Marshall M Bouton
-ThePrint.in Researchers associated with Pennsylvania University’s India study centre looked at agricultural markets of Bihar, Odisha and Punjab. They found that intermediaries are a rational response to the dominant structure of Indian farming. Most Indian farmers have tiny farms that yield meagre incomes. They face a multiplicity of risks, which jeopardises even these low incomes. These twin pressures are particularly acute in eastern India, manifest in the two states that were the...
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