By Dr Arjun Kumar, Ritika Gupta
Delivering a Special Lecture organized by Centre for Work and Welfare (CWW) at the Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI) on Labour, Employment and Pandemic: Policy Suggestions and Way Forward for Budget 2021, Prof Santosh Mehrotra, retired professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), observed that the fiscal stimulus provided by the Government of India (GoI) post-lockdown was severely inadequate. It was only a fraction of what was provided post the 2008 global financial meltdown where the effects on the economy were comparatively mediocre, he maintains.
Prof Mehrotra stated that while going into the ill-planned lockdown, India already had about 280 million unemployed people. He added that the growth rate of the country was falling quarter by quarter since 2016 and had hit a dismal low of 4.1% in early 2020. The lockdown imposed in March, which is touted as the most stringent in the world by various reports, skyrocketed India’s unemployme