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...

Editorial team, Carbon Copy  Ongoing shifts in rainfall and temperature caused by climate change are likely to increase the debt burden faced by rural households, particularly of marginalised groups in dry areas, an editorial in Carbon Copy magazine said. The piece cited a study in the journal Climate Change that argues that changes in climate, along with existing socio-economic differences - caste and landholding in particular — will deepen the size...

There is some respite expected for India in terms of prices of imported commodities. This may ease the depletion of its foreign exchange reserves. The country has faced a widening of its merchandise trade deficit from US$ -17.91 billion to US$ -26.91 billion between October 2021 and October 2022. The commodity price data provided by the World Bank in December 2022 (termed as The Pink Sheet) shows that energy prices plummeted by...

-PTI/ The Hindu Between 2016–2021, extreme events triggered by climate change caused damage to crops in over 36 million hectares, and a $3.75 billion loss for farmers in the country India suffered an income loss of $159 billion, 5.4% of its gross domestic product, in the service, manufacturing, agriculture, and construction sectors due to extreme heat in 2021, according to a new report.   Heat exposure in the country led to the loss...

-Moneycontrol.com Measures like assistance for fallow land cultivation, upland cultivation, and conversion of single crop to double crop have increased productivity. Though paddy farmers are still struggling with rising cost of production and procurement delays, they get a daily wage of Rs 700, against Rs 200-300 in other states. Paddy farmers in Kerala have something to cheer amidst the ongoing row between the Kerala government and the rice millers over procurement. Rice production...