-National Herald According to the RBI, gross non-performing assets of MSMEs increased by Rs. 20,000 crores from September 2020 (when it was Rs. 1,45,673) to September 2021 (when it became Rs. 1,65,732 crore) Micro, small and medium enterprises (or MSMEs) seem to be the sector most hit by the pandemic since 2020. According to the Reserve Bank of India, gross non-performing assets of MSMEs increased by Rs. 20,000 crores from September 2020...

-Business Standard Since jobs will remain scarce for the foreseeable future, an unemployment allowance should be the next big social-security initiative, writes T N Ninan Crises in the Indian economy used to be the “normal”. In the 12 years from 1962 to 1974, India fought three wars, suffered four droughts that produced famine in places like Bihar, and lived through the first oil shock, which saw a quadrupling of crude oil prices. The...

In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...

-CBGA Blog India presented its latest Union Budget (for FY 2022 -23) in early February amid much hope, as the country is still reeling from the aftermath of Covid-19 pandemic, which has lasted for two years. To deal with the pandemic induced socio-economic crisis, countries across the world  have been announcing policy measures outside of their annual budgets. The Indian government, too, made many such announcements, but given the scale of the...

-TheWeek.in Well-off are doing fine; stagflation confined to middle and lower-middle classes Kaushik Basu, former chief economic adviser to the government and former chief economist of the World Bank, is currently teaching at Cornell University in the US. In an exclusive interaction, he talks about the current challenges before the Indian economy and its future growth prospects. Excerpts: Q/ Is the Indian economy moving in the right direction? A/ The performance of the Indian...