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...

There is euphoria abound about India's growth performance during the first quarter of the current fiscal. As compared to the corresponding period last year, the year-on-year (y-o-y) GDP growth in the first quarter (Q1) of 2022-23 is down. However, one should take into account the fact that the high growth performance of the real GDP in Q1 of 2021-22 was due to the low base in the corresponding period of...

The transport sector is important for the smooth functioning of an economy. The supply chains for various products and by-products (both domestically as well as internationally) can work efficiently only if the transportation of raw materials and inputs, and final goods and commodities takes place without disruption.   Due to economic growth, India’s annual CO2 (i.e., carbon dioxide) emission has expanded from 1.19 billion tonnes in 2005 to 2.44 billion tonnes...

-Hindustan Times Earlier this week, the ministry released a user manual for online submission of an undertaking on no increase in pollution load due to expansion, on its Parivesh website. The environment ministry has allowed companies operating in several industries, including some polluting ones, to expand capacities on the basis of a self-certification that this will not “increase the pollution load”, creating the room for potential misdeclaration (and misuse), especially in light...

-The Hindu/ PTI It is the steepest contraction in the last six months The output of eight core sectors declined by 4.6% in February, the steepest contraction in the last six months, which, experts said, could drag the overall industrial production in the month into the negative territory. All the key segments, including coal, crude oil, natural gas, and refinery products, witnessed a decline in production, according to the official data released on...