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...
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What data told us about India in 2022 - Akshi Chawla
DeCEDA/Qrius 2022 was a milestone year for India. India walked into 2022 with an infectious wave of Covid-19 impacting lakhs of people, the wave receded a few weeks into the year. As hopes for a post-pandemic recovery surged, war in Ukraine brought in new challenges for the economy. With supply chains disrupted, global sanctions imposed on Russia, prices of fuel and food shot up. Inflation, already on a high from pent-up...
More »Limited Room for Public Spending - Santosh Mehrotra
- Financial Express The Union Government will present its ninth and last full budget before national elections in early 2024. But none of the growth engines inspire optimism, Santosh Mehrotra writes in Financial Express. Nearly 60 percent of India's GDP is accounted for by private onsumption expenditure. However, since demonetisation consumer expenditure has been tepid as job growth fell sharply. Per capita consumption in 2022-23 is just above the level of 2019-20. Private...
More »Govt eyes $17 billion cut in food, fertiliser subsidies in 2023/24
-Reuters/ Business Today The government aims to cut spending on food and fertiliser subsidies to Rs 3.7 lakh crore ($44.6 billion) in the fiscal year from April, down 26% from this year, two government officials said, to rein in a fiscal deficit that ballooned during the COVID-19 pandemic. Food and fertiliser subsidies alone account for about one-eighth of total budget spending of Rs 39.45 lakh crore this fiscal year, but reductions...
More »Understanding the rejig in India’s food security programme -Roshan Kishore and Pavitra Kanagaraj
-Hindustan Times India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) after the enactment of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) promises 5kg foodgrain per persons at a highly subsidised cost of ₹3/kg for rice, Rs.2/kg for wheat and Rs.1/kg for cereals. The government will stand to lose this revenue after the decision to make PDS entitlements free. New Delhi: On December 24, the Union government announced a rejig of India’s food security programme. It has...
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