-TheIndiaForum.in The unequal labour market in India would have seen a widening of disparities after Covid-19 struck. Those at the bottom, with few skills, limited education & without security, would have been affected the most; they are the ones in immediate need of support. The widespread loss of jobs and incomes following the dual shocks of the pandemic and the lockdown have generated much concern. What is particularly worrying is that the...
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Why dairy farmers in Maharashtra are dumping their milk -Parthasarathi Biswas
-The Indian Express As farmers take to dumping their milk on roads and stopping milk supply to urban areas, dairies blame the COVID-19 pandemic and the frequent lockdowns as the reason behind the recent price corrections. Milk prices are again in the news and this time the low realisations at farmer ends have brought them on the streets. Dairy farmers in Maharashtra have started a series of protests from Monday against the...
More »Can raising the approved labour budget from 280.76 crore person-days to 306.6 crore person-days help the unskilled returnee migrants who prefer MGNREGA to Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan?
Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...
More »Why India’s trade surplus is a warning signal -Parthapratim Pal and Partha Ray
-The Hindu Business Line Despite the lockdown, India’s trade balance in April and May turned positive. This has been achieved by a sharper decline in imports, pointing towards a contraction of demand in the real economy The RBI has released India’s balance of payments data for the fourth quarter (January-March) of 2019-20. It shows that during this quarter, India has managed a small current account surplus which is around 0.1 per cent...
More »Rs 150,000 crore plus: the govt stimulus for rural areas post lockdown -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express That’s the actual liquidity pumped into rural areas by government post lockdown – through grain procurement, PM-Kisan and MGNREGA wages. There are many parallels one can draw between the novel coronavirus-induced lockdown (gharbandi) and demonetisation (notebandi), in terms of their impact on India’s farm economy. Both resulted in the same thing – demand destruction – albeit through different routes. Notebandi caused a haemorrhaging of liquidity from the predominantly cash-based farm...
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