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...

Budget 2023's allocations for most critical social security schemes have declined in real terms, says economist Jean Dreze - IndiaSpend The last full Union budget before the next general elections in 2024, which was presented on February 1, gets "a big zero" in terms of welfare spending from economist and social activist Jean Dreze. Budget allocations for most critical social security schemes have declined in real terms, Dreze said. The Union government withdrew...

-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....

-Newsclick.in Inequality is not natural but manufactured. It’s time policymakers stopped normalising the wealth and income gap. Else, post-Covid inequality could become a permanent feature. Wealth and income inequality are more than just economic concepts. They also influence education and health outcomes, poverty levels, employment and unemployment rates, opportunities, choices, and, ultimately, happiness. Of late, several reports have investigated the impact of COVID-19 on various segments of society at the regional, national,...

-Deccan Chronicle Adilabad: When the founding fathers of the Indian republic sat down to write the Constitution, the feature that they gave utmost importance was equality. It was the cornerstone on which the Constitution stands. They wanted each individual to enjoy equality in opportunity as well as treatment. But even 75 years after independence, successive governments failed to make good this constitutional pledge to several sections of people. Women are one of...