-The Hindu The economic situation warrants enhanced government expenditure; the policy challenge is to minimise the growth fall India’s growth in the first quarter of 2020-21 at (-) 23.9% showed one of the highest contractions globally. Global growth prospects for 2020 have been projected by a number of multilateral institutions and rating agencies including that for India. The 2020-21 real GDP growth for India is forecast in the range of (-) 5.8%...

-Livemint.com * While 5.9 million white collar workers lost their jobs between May-August 2020, over the previous four months ended 30 April, this job loss number stood at 6.6 million when compared with May-August 2019 * Continued curbs and localized lockdowns have hit economic recovery and employment prospects NEW DELHI: Almost six million white-collar workers, including engineers, physicians, teachers, accountants and analysts, lost their jobs between May and August, the Centre for Monitoring...

-The Hindu The reported contraction of the economy is likely an underestimate for reasons of omission and commission According to data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation of the Government of India on August 31, 2020, real quarterly GDP contracted by a whopping 23.9% between April-June 2019 and April-June 2020. This magnitude of real GDP decline is unprecedented since the country started publishing quarterly GDP estimates in 1996. This...

-Hindustan Times Launch a massive programme to rehabilitate returnee migrants; allocate an additional Rs 50,000 crore for MGNREGS; extend the free ration scheme for six more months; revive and strengthen public systems of service deliver; RBI should give a directive to banks to extend a top-up loan of Rs 10,000 crore to Self-help Groups After the Covid-19 outbreak, 66% of rural households fell short of cash for food. About 40% reduced their...

-The Telegraph The economic distress caused by unilaterally imposed lockdowns has brought the focus back on the rural job programme Narendra Modi’s cocky statement in Parliament in 2015 about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act being a monumental failure of the Congress regime may have been a political jibe, but it showed that the government had no intention of boosting a programme which, since its inception, has suffered from the...