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...

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...

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...

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...

-The Telegraph Study by researchers at International Institute of Population Sciences finds that health reasons account for 7 per cent of 3,213 people who stopped work for a year or longer New Delhi: Chronic health disorders accounted for 30 per cent of decisions by a sample of middle-aged and elderly people in India to stop or curtail paid work, the country’s first-ever population-based study to estimate how chronic diseases impact Productivity has...