-The Hindu The trend across developing countries is to give State governments as much discretion as possible India urgently needs to increase fiscal support for COVID-19 relief and rebuilding. Among comparable developing countries with similar Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, India has spent the least as a share of its GDP. While the Central government has announced measures amounting to 0.8% of GDP, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that State-level relief...
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Recent reports predict gloomy days ahead for the overall economy
Most reports and studies by official agencies, international think tanks and private entities indicate the cataclysmic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy and society. They anticipate that lockdowns imposed by various countries across the globe to reduce the exponential diffusion of COVID-19 (i.e. for flattening the curve by social distancing and quarantines) would adversely affect economic growth and disrupt supply chains in most sectors, on top of causing...
More »By revealing magnitude of migrant worker phenomenon, COVID-19 points to rural distress -Christophe Jaffrelot and Hemal Thakker
-The Indian Express According to the 2011 census, 3.5 million migrants who moved within the last one year stated economic reasons for migration. The corresponding numbers for the 2001 and 1991 census, were, respectively, 2.2 and 1.4 million. The COVID-19 crisis is affecting rural India at a time when agriculture is already in a precarious situation. The thousands of migrant workers who have returned to their villages since the lockdown used to...
More »Problematic revisions: We need fewer, quicker economic growth estimates -AK Bhattacharya
-Business Standard The CSO releases as many as 6 estimates of India's annual economic output growth; believe it or not, these estimates for the same year's economic output are released over a period of three years! When the Central Statistics Office (CSO) declared India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth figure for 2016-17 on January 6, 2017, economic policy makers in the Narendra Modi government were disappointed. The GDP growth figure was only...
More »No green shoots of a revival in sight as yet -R Nagaraj
-The Hindu The latest GDP data show that there has been an undeniable decline in the growth rate over seven consecutive quarters On February 28, as per its release calendar, the National Statistical Office (NSO) put out the third quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates, that is, for October-December 2020. It showed that domestic output grew at 4.7% at constant prices (that is, net of inflation), compared to the same period the...
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