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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Real Wages Declined for Rural Indians in 2022, a Year When the Economy Somewhat Recovered
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...
More »India’s Manufacturing Growth Slowdown a Decadal Problem -Deepanshu Mohan
-TheWire.in In India’s growth trajectory, for over a decade, domestic private investment levels have remained consistently low and so has (domestic) manufacturing growth. As per recent quarterly estimates, India’s growth rate slowed to 6.3% in the September quarter of 2022-23. There is evidence of a notable contraction in output of manufacturing that’s pulling down growth. This author has previously argued that quarterly growth estimates may not reveal the real state of an economy....
More »Agri Workers’ Tiny Wage Rise Wiped Out by Inflation -Subodh Varma
-Newsclick.in In the past five years, agri workers’ wage has increased by only about Rs.15 per year. For those leaders of the country who are tearing their hair trying to figure out how to get the economy moving, boost growth, increase investment and create jobs, it would be instructive to look at the plight of the largest economic class in the country – agricultural labourers. Numbering upward of 14 crore, they are...
More »Perils of the Gig Economy -Asiya Islam and Damni Kain
-TheIndiaForum.in The uncritical tone of the NITI Aayog’s recent report on the gig economy in India and its belief that platformisation will create an inclusive working environment is, at best, credulous, and, at worst, a deliberate attempt to ignore the erosion of workers’ rights, security, and welfare. In August 2022, more than a hundred workers in Bengaluru working for online food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy went on strike. Echoing central trade...
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