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...

National Law School of India University, Bengaluru What is the status of hunger and malnutrition in India? The year 2023 marks a decade since the enactment of the National Food Security Act (NFSA). The Act aims to provide food and nutritional security by ensuring access to quality food at affordable prices. However, despite 10 years of food security being a legal right and the availability of sufficient quantities of food grains, India...

A coalition of civil society activits has criticized the Union Budget 2023-24 for reducing government spending on the social sector by a massive amount. The economic crisis induced by the Covid-19 pandemic was borne disproportionately by those at the bottom of the pyramid and in this context spending on social protection schemes such as the Public Distribution System, anganwadis, pensions and MGNREGA is especially important. But the Government of India has...

-Moneycontrol.com To become a reliable exporter, India needs to adopt climate-resilient technologies and a digital system of traceability of agricultural produce The success of the green revolution and the use of technology in agriculture made India a nation surplus in some crops. This enabled India to emerge as a large exporter of rice and sugar. In the following years, wheat was also exported, although Indian wheat was mostly uncompetitive in the global...

-Moneycontrol.com The free and subsidised grains are an implicit income transfer to people and ensure basic protection from starvation The distribution of free grains through the Public Distribution System (PDS) under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) has been one of the main relief measures undertaken by the Indian government in response to the economic distress brought about by the Covid pandemic. From April 2020 until the end of 2022,...