989 Covid effect: The proportion of the poor rose from 22% in 2019 to 39% in 2020. Even the cream of India’s employees does not feel secure in their jobs. PTI
Aunindyo Chakravarty
Senior Economic Analyst
We have enough evidence to show that the Covid pandemic has left most Indians poorer. Even the recovery that we saw in October last year barely managed to put an average Indian family on a par with where it was two years ago. CMIE’s latest data shows that even in January, when many believed India had defeated the coronavirus, the average household income was below the lowest point of 2019. Pew Research estimates that the number of poor people in India more than doubled last year.
According to the CMIE, national unemployment rate rose to 14.73% in the week ending May 23 from 14.45% in the previous week – an increase of 0.28 points
Did workfare offset jobs losses in India?
It is probably not an understatement to say that the policy response to COVID-19 in terms of social protection programs has been staggering. Colleagues have impressively been tracking this through the global monitoring platform. New programs are being created and existing programs are being expanded, and we continue to learn about how and for whom these programs can be effective to offset the negative impact of crisis. In their paper studying the world’s largest employment guarantee scheme in India, Afridi, Mahajan, and Sangwan examine the extent to which an existing workfare program cushioned the impact of the crisis. This program, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MG-NREGA) program, mandates the offer of 100 days of manual work on public rural infrastructure projects (such as irrigation canals and roads). It also mandates a reservation of 1/3rd of jobs in each MG-NREGA project for women. In 2018, 76 million peop
The first wave of Covid last year pushed the earnings of the families of 23 crore Indians below the national minimum daily wage of Rs 375 suggested by a government-appointed committee, a report released on Wednesday said.
The “State of Working India 2021: One year of Covid-19”, released by the Azim Premji University, says the number of people living in households with daily incomes below Rs 375 was 22.62 crore and 7.24 crore in rural and urban areas, respectively, at the start of the outbreak in March 2020.
At the end of October last year, eight months into the pandemic, these numbers had increased to 36.52 crore (a rise of 61 per cent) in rural areas and 16.38 crore (a rise of 126 per cent) in urban areas, respectively. Collectively, the number rose from 29.86 crore to 52.9 crore, a rise of 77 per cent.