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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Why India’s Balance of Payments is Headed for Hard Times -Prabhat Patnaik
-Newsclick.in The yawning merchandise trade deficit is occurring not because of any economic boom but in the midst of creeping industrial Stagnation. India’s current account deficit for the second quarter (July-September) of 2022-23 has reached a massive $36.4 billion, which is 4.4% of the gross domestic product, higher than at any time in the last nine years. It is only in October-December 2012 that the absolute level of the current account deficit...
More »Why Has India’s Industrial Economy Become Stagnant? -Prabhat Patnaik
-Newsclick.in The sharp and apparently intriguing fall in industrial production in October, and feeble post-Covid recovery, points to a deep-rooted malaise in the Indian economy. There has been much discussion in public about the index of industrial production (IIP) for October 2022 being 4% lower than the index for October 2021; and quite rightly so, since no obvious explanations like a Covid-induced lockdown or even its residual lingering effects can be adduced...
More »Instead of Withdrawing Food Security, a Minimum Income Guarantee Is Needed -Santosh Mehrotra, Anjana Rajagopalan and Rakesh Ranjan
-TheWire.in A Minimum Income Guarantee would not just cushion exogenous shocks, but would arrest the process of vulnerability begetting vulnerability. While the worst of the pandemic is behind us, there has been a decline in general purchasing power amidst inflation. The provisional Consumer Food Price Index (combined for rural and urban) for September 2022 is pegged at 8.6%, a huge increase from 0.68% for September 2021. The latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS)...
More »First Quarter GDP Estimates This Year no Cause for Celebration -Prabhat Patnaik
-Newsclick.in It is clear that the Stagnation that was setting in during 2019-20 has persisted and has even intensified now. The estimates of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the April-June quarter released by the government on August 31 paint a dismal picture of the Indian economy. Since the GDP in real terms (at 2011-12 prices) shows an increase of 13.5% over the first quarter GDP a year ago, and since 13.5% appears...
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