A coalition of civil society activits has criticized the Union Budget 2023-24 for reducing government spending on the social sector by a massive amount. The economic crisis induced by the Covid-19 pandemic was borne disproportionately by those at the bottom of the pyramid and in this context spending on social protection schemes such as the Public Distribution System, anganwadis, pensions and MGNREGA is especially important. But the Government of India has...
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What data told us about India in 2022 - Akshi Chawla
DeCEDA/Qrius 2022 was a milestone year for India. India walked into 2022 with an infectious wave of Covid-19 impacting lakhs of people, the wave receded a few weeks into the year. As hopes for a post-pandemic recovery surged, war in Ukraine brought in new challenges for the economy. With supply chains disrupted, global sanctions imposed on Russia, prices of fuel and food shot up. Inflation, already on a high from pent-up...
More »Indian banks gave more home loans than agricultural credit
In each of the last three years – from 2020 through 2022 – Indian banks lent more money to retail customers purchasing homes than they did to farmers. In fiscal year (FY)2021-22 commercial banks gaveRs. 17.54 lakh crore worth of housing loans, while agriculture and allied activities got Rs. 15.16 lakh crore. That is nearly 14 percent less. In FY 2021 and FY 2020 – one of which saw a...
More »Top 1% of Indians own 40.5% percent wealth, bottom 50% has around 3% - Oxfam Inequality report
Following the pandemic, the income of the bottom 50 per cent of the population is estimated at 13 percent of national income and 3 percent of total wealth Apoorva Mahendru, Kanishk Gomes, Mayurakshi Dutta, Noopur, Pravas Ranjan Mishra Oxfam International's annual inequality report makes for stark reading. The India supplement, part of the main report, states that the top 1 percent of Indians own nearly 40.6 percent of the total wealth in...
More »India’s 20 Largest Profit Generators Are Earning 80% Of the Nation’s Profits - Nandita Rajhansa, Saurabh Mukherjea
A decade ago, this figure was around 40%. This is leading to an increasingly polarised stock market - Marcellus/The Wire The United Payments Interface and the digitisation of business activity in India are one of the several factors driving an exponential surge in the concentration of corporate profitability in India. Improvements in transport infrastructure (e.g., the highway network has doubled over the past decade), the introduction of GST (in 2017) and new...
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