-Livemint.com The country can’t expect to be a superpower with gender disparities worsening the way they are The latest bulletins from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) present a dismal picture. The calamitous fall in employment in April 2020 was followed by a partial recovery in May and June, but the recovery tapered off by September. October and November saw declines again. This slowdown in economic activity can be seen in...

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...

-The Indian Express What needs to be ensured is that the recovery is not hamstrung by damaged household and SME balance sheets because of the extended loss of wages and incomes. This requires extensive income support now. Sometimes we miss the forest for the trees, and at other times the trees themselves become the story. That seems to be the case with India’s 3Q20 GDP print. Some have exulted over headline growth printing...

-Livemint.com A failure to protect incomes could widen the gap between have-nots and haves and thus hurt growth When the facts change, I change my mind," John Maynard Keynes is believed to have said almost a century ago. Responding to the economic after-shocks of the covid pandemic, governments and central banks have been living by this maxim. In the UK and US, supposedly fiscally conservative governments have spent with abandon to prop...

Preliminary findings of a survey among 3,994 respondents from 11 states reveal that most vulnerable households and communities, such as SCs, STs, OBCs, PVTGs, slum dwellers, daily wage labourers, farmers, single women headed households, etc. continue to witness depressed incomes during September-October in comparison to their income levels prior to the lockdown. The face-to-face survey conducted by the Right to Food Campaign and Center for Equity Studies (instead of telephonic...