The Niti Aayog recently released its National Multidimensional Poverty Index 2023, according to which the poverty headcount ratio declined from 24.85 percent in 2015-16 to 14.96 percent in 2019-21. In absolute numbers this translates to 135 million people exiting multidimensional poverty in this time period. In addition, a few days earlier, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released its own Multidimensional Poverty Index, which in a press note said that,...
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Explainer: Why are Tomato Prices on Fire?
Tomato prices are up through the roof. Retail prices are in the range of Rs 120-150 per kilogram in most mandis across India, making the household vegetable more expensive than petrol. Prices, which at the beginning of the year were in the range of Rs. 25 a kg, have increased by an order of between 500-600 percent. What does the data show? The National Horticultural Board is a body under the...
More »Poverty and inequality
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...
More »Real Wages Declined for Rural Indians in 2022, a Year When the Economy Somewhat Recovered
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...
More »Rural Consumption Stays Sluggish; Weather poses risk to recovery - Gireesh Chandra Prasad
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...
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