The year 2022 was supposed to mark the recovery of the Indian economy from the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns of the preceding two years. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February pushed up prices of food, fuel and fertilizer worldwide. In India consumer price inflation, which had declined to under 5 percent in the September-November period of 2021, has steadily increased, staying above 6 percent throughout 2022.    What happened to rural incomes in 2022? An...

Livemint While India staged a double-digit rebound in household consumption in FY22 which is set to expand at over 7% this fiscal, experts point out that India’s consumption story has a weakness — rural folk tightening their belt in the face of inflation.  The silver lining is that the worst may be over, unless El Nino conditions disrupt the arrival of the rains and dampen a consumption revival, experts said. Gross domestic product...

Demand for work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) inched up in February to scale an eight-month high, after a month-on-month fall in January, reflecting an uneven recovery in broader economic activities. According to rural development ministry data, 26.3 million individuals opted for work under the scheme in February, up 1.7% from the previous month. Demand for the work came from 21.2 million households, recording a 2.4%...

Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Consumer sentiments improved in January 2023. CMIE's Index of Consumer Sentiments (ICS) reached 83.9, which is the highest since sentiments were hit severely by the Covid-19 induced lockdowns. The ICS, however, continues to remain lower than its pre-pandemic level. The ICS was at 105.3 in February 2020.  The recovery in consumer sentiments from the pandemic has been the slowest among all economic indicators. While most production indicators...

Livemint Air travel in India has surged to a new post-covid record in February, with an unexpectedly robust showing in what is typically one of the slowest periods for airlines, driven by a rebound in corporate travel and demand from events such as the recent G20 meetings and Aero India. India’s average daily domestic air passenger numbers in February increased to around 420,000 from 410,000 in December. The average daily passengers in...