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...
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Rationale behind raising interest rates -Sashwath Swaminathan nd Anand Srinivasan
-The Hindu A critical facet of the consequences of an interest rate increase is the correction of asset prices. Interest rates act as gravity to stock market prices The Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world have raised interest rates to curb inflation. The rationale behind raising interest rates is that the cost of borrowing rises whenever they are raised, and the incentive to save and invest rather than consume...
More »Monetary Policy Alone Inadequate To Tame Inflation -Dr. Amar Patnaik
-NDTV.com At a time when Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation has remained above RBI's upper tolerance level of 6% for seven consecutive months and the WPI inflation rates are at the highest levels since January 2007, it is good that the issue was finally discussed in parliament and the RBI's recent rate hike signals recognition of the concern. However, during the debate in the parliament, the Treasury bench largely took a...
More »Forget minimum wages, MGNREGA workers not even receiving notified wages in many states
Every year in the month of either February or March, the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) announces the notified MGNREGA wage rates (i.e., notified daily wage rates for MGNREGA workers) for various states and Union Territories (UTs) for the upcoming financial year. The MGNREGA rates are notified every year based on the increase in Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPI-AL). Like the previous years, in 2021 too, experts and civil...
More »Real wage rates of the rural workers hardly increased during the last 6 years
In the absence of income or expenditure-based headcount ratio, the growth in the real wages (i.e., nominal wages adjusted against retail inflation) of the manual workers is considered to be a good proxy to assess the trends in poverty. This is because the manual, unskilled/ semi-skilled labourers exist at the bottom of the pyramid or economic hierarchy, and most of them belong to the social categories Scheduled Castes (SCs) and...
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