KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

-The Telegraph Research considers expenses arising out of visits to hospitals, clinics and doctors’ private chambers and not those from home visits by doctors New Delhi: Medicines account for the largest share of healthcare expenditure arising out of hospital visits by Indian households, whether seeking outpatient or inpatient services, but health-related non-medical expenses on travel or accommodation too pose big financial burdens, new research has indicated. The study, a comprehensive dissection of out-of-pocket...

One is almost certain to hear this from an economist that if something is available at free of cost or at a subsidised rate thanks to government intervention, then people tend to overuse or overconsume such goods/ commodities. So, the best solution is to create a market for such 'almost freely available' or 'highly subsidised' goods or commodities. Once people start paying to use or consume such goods/ commodities, they...

-The Hindu Business Line Recent data shows an alarming fall in income from crop cultivation. Improving procurement infra is the need of the hour The report of the ‘Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households and Land and Holdings of Households in Rural India 2019’ released by the National Statistical Office in September 2021 reveals the pathetic income level of Indian farmers. The average monthly income from different sources per agricultural household in July 2018...

The newly released Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (NSS 77th Round) establishes the fact that the farm households are more and more relying on wage incomes instead of 'net incomes from crop cultivation' for their livelihoods. In Marxian lexicon, proletarisation (a term that we can loosely use for depeasantisation) refers to the process in which the farmers/ tillers are...