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 average value of assets (AVA) of the top ten percent of urban households in India is more than seven thousand five hundred times greater than what the bottom ten percent owns. The AVA of the top decile was Rs. 1.5 crores, while the lowest decile owned an average of Rs. 2,000 of assets. The data is part of the All India Debt and Investment Survey - 2019, the survey for...

Factchecker.in On March 6, 2023, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath claimed that no farmer had died by suicide in the last six years. But, 398 farmers and 731 farm labourers died by suicide between 2017 and 2021 in the state, official data show. “Sugarcane farmers in Uttar Pradesh were forced to burn their crops and attempt suicide but in the last six years, no farmer in Uttar Pradesh has died by...

Deccan Herald Many economists expected a massive allocation for the agricultural sector in the budget, especially after the repeal of three farm law bills.  However, the agricultural sector allocation decreased drastically from Rs 1.33 lakh crore in the Union Budget 2022–23 to Rs 1.25 lakh crore in 2023–24. It received only 3.78 per cent of the total budget share in 2021–22; this was reduced to 3.36 per cent in 2022–23 and further...

In each of the last three years – from 2020 through 2022 – Indian banks lent more money to retail customers purchasing homes than they did to farmers. In fiscal year (FY)2021-22 commercial banks gaveRs. 17.54 lakh crore worth of housing loans, while agriculture and allied activities got Rs. 15.16 lakh crore. That is nearly 14 percent less. In FY 2021 and FY 2020 – one of which saw a...