India in Crisis: Unemployment and Hunger Persist After Waves of COVID

India lost 6.8 million salaried jobs and 3.5 million entrepreneurs in November alone. Many among the unemployed can no longer afford to buy food, causing a significant spike in hunger. The country's economy is finding it hard to recover from COVID waves and lockdowns, according to data from multiple sources. At the same time, the Indian government has reported an 8.4% jump in economic growth in the July-to-September period compared with a contraction of 7.4% for the same period a year earlier.  This raises the following questions: Has India had jobless growth? Or its GDP figures are fudged? If the Indian economy fails to deliver for the common man, will Prime Minister Narendra Modi step up his anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim rhetoric to maintain his popularity among Hindus?

Labor Participation Rate in India. Source: CMIE

Unemployment Crisis:

India lost 6.8 million salaried jobs and its labor participation rate (LPR) slipped from 40.41% to  40.15% in November, 2021, according to the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).  In addition to the loss of salaried jobs, the number of entrepreneurs in India declined by 3.5 million. India's labor participation rate of 40.15% is lower than Pakistan's 48%.   Here's an except of the latest CMIE report:

"India’s LPR is much lower than global levels. According to the World Bank, the modelled ILO estimate for the world in 2020 was 58.6 per cent (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.ZS). The same model places India’s LPR at 46 per cent. India is a large country and its low LPR drags down the world LPR as well. Implicitly, most other countries have a much higher LPR than the world average. According to the World Bank’s modelled ILO estimates, there are only 17 countries worse than India on LPR. Most of these are middle-eastern countries. These are countries such as Jordan, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Senegal and Lebanon. Some of these countries are oil-rich and others are unfortunately mired in civil strife. India neither has the privileges of oil-rich countries nor the civil disturbances that could keep the LPR low. Yet, it suffers an LPR that is as low as seen in these countries".

Labor Participation Rates in India and Pakistan. Source: World Bank...

Labor Participation Rates for Selected Nations. Source: World Bank/ILO

Youth  unemployment for ages15-24 in India is 24.9%, the highest in South Asia region. It is 14.8% in Bangladesh 14.8% and 9.2% in Pakistan, according to the International Labor Organization and the World Bank.  

Youth Unemployment in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Source: ILO, WB

In spite of the headline GDP growth figures highlighted by the Indian and world media, the fact is that it has been jobless growth. The labor participation rate (LPR) in India has been falling for more than a decade. The LPR in India has been below Pakistan's for several years, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). 

Indian GDP Sectoral Contribution Trend. Source: Ashoka Mody 

Even before the COVID19 pandemic, India's labor participation rate was around 43%, lower than its neighbors'. Now it has slipped further to about 40%. Meanwhile, the Indian government has reported an 8.4% jump in economic growth in the July-to-September period compared with a contraction of 7.4% for the same period a year earlier.  This raises the following questions: Has India had jobless growth? Or its GDP figures are fudged?  If the Indian economy fails to deliver for the common man, will Prime Minister Narendra Modi step up his anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim rhetoric to maintain his popularity among Hindus?
Indian Employment Trends By Sector. Source: CMIE Via Business Standard

Hunger Crisis:
'
India ranks 94th among 107 nations ranked by World Hunger Index in 2020. Other South Asians have fared better: Pakistan (88), Nepal (73), Bangladesh (75), Sri Lanka (64) and Myanmar (78) – and only Afghanistan has fared worse at 99th place. The COVID19 pandemic has worsened India's hunger and malnutrition. Tens of thousands of Indian children were forced to go to sleep on an empty stomach as the daily wage workers lost their livelihood and Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in the South Asian nationPakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan opted for "smart lockdown" that reduced the impact on daily wage earners. China, the place where COVID19 virus first emerged, is among 17 countries with the lowest level of hunger. 
World Hunger Rankings 2020. Source: World Hunger Index Report


India Among Worst Hit: 
 
India has a 17.3% child wasting rate, the worst in the South Asia region. Child stunting is also extremely high across South Asia. “Data from 1991 through 2014 for Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan showed that stunting is concentrated among children from households facing multiple forms of deprivation, including poor dietary diversity, low levels of maternal education, and household poverty,” the World Hunger Report said. China, the place where COVID19 virus first emerged, is among 17 countries with the lowest level of hunger. 

Hunger and malnutrition are worsening in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia because of the coronavirus pandemic, especially in low-income communities or those already stricken by continued conflict. 

India has performed particularly poorly because of one of the world's strictest lockdowns imposed by Prime Minister Modi to contain the spread of the virus. 

Hanke Annual Misery Index: 

Pakistanis are less miserable than Indians in the economic sphere, according to the Hanke Annual Misery Index (HAMI) published in early 2021 by Professor Steve Hanke. With India ranked 49th worst and Pakistan ranked 39th worst, both countries find themselves among the most miserable third of the 156 nations ranked. Hanke teaches Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Hanke explains it as follows: "In the economic sphere, misery tends to flow from high inflation, steep borrowing costs, and unemployment. The surefire way to mitigate that misery is through economic growth. All else being equal, happiness tends to blossom when growth is strong, inflation and interest rates are low, and jobs are plentiful". Several key global indices, including misery index, happiness index, hunger index, food affordability index, labor force participation rate,  ILO’s minimum wage data, all show that people in Pakistan are better off than their counterparts in India.   
 

Pakistan's Real GDP: 

Vehicles and home appliance ownership data analyzed by Dr. Jawaid Abdul Ghani of Karachi School of Business Leadership suggests that the officially reported GDP significantly understates Pakistan's actual GDP.  Indeed, many economists believe that Pakistan’s economy is at least double the size that is officially reported in the government's Economic Surveys. The GDP has not been rebased in more than a decade. It was last rebased in 2005-6 while India’s was rebased in 2011 and Bangladesh’s in 2013. Just rebasing the Pakistani economy will result in at least 50% increase in official GDP.  A research paper by economists Ali Kemal and Ahmad Waqar Qasim of PIDE (Pakistan Institute of Development Economics) estimated in 2012 that the Pakistani economy’s size then was around $400 billion. All they did was look at the consumption data to reach their conclusion. They used the data reported in regular PSLM (Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurements) surveys on actual living standards. They found that a huge chunk of the country's economy is undocumented. 

Pakistan's service sector which contributes more than 50% of the country's GDP is mostly cash-based and least documented. There is a lot of currency in circulation. According to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the currency in circulation has increased to Rs. 7.4 trillion by the end of the financial year 2020-21, up from Rs 6.7 trillion in the last financial year,  a double-digit growth of 10.4% year-on-year.   Currency in circulation (CIC), as percent of M2 money supply and currency-to-deposit ratio, has been increasing over the last few years.  The CIC/M2 ratio is now close to 30%. The average CIC/M2 ratio in FY18-21 was measured at 28%, up from 22% in FY10-15. This 1.2 trillion rupee increase could have generated undocumented GDP of Rs 3.1 trillion at the historic velocity of 2.6, according to a report in The Business Recorder. In comparison to Bangladesh (CIC/M2 at 13%), Pakistan’s cash economy is double the size. Even a casual observer can see that the living standards in Pakistan are higher than those in Bangladesh and India. 

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Comment by Riaz Haq on May 21, 2022 at 8:21pm

Our total consumption of wheat and atta is about 125kg per capita per year. Our per person per day calorie intake has risen from about 2,078 in 1949-50 to 2,400 in 2001-02 and 2,580 in 2020-21

By Riaz Riazuddin former deputy governor of the State Bank of Pakistan.


https://www.dawn.com/news/1659441/consumption-habits-inflation

As households move to upper-income brackets, the share of spending on food consumption falls. This is known as Engel’s law. Empirical proof of this relationship is visible in the falling share of food from about 48pc in 2001-02 for the average household. This is an obvious indication that the real incomes of households have risen steadily since then, and inflation has not eaten up the entire rise in nominal incomes. Inflation seldom outpaces the rise in nominal incomes.

Coming back to eating habits, our main food spending is on milk. Of the total spending on food, about 25pc was spent on milk (fresh, packed and dry) in 2018-19, up from nearly 17pc in 2001-01. This is a good sign as milk is the most nourishing of all food items. This behaviour (largest spending on milk) holds worldwide. The direct consumption of milk by our households was about seven kilograms per month, or 84kg per year. Total milk consumption per capita is much higher because we also eat ice cream, halwa, jalebi, gulab jamun and whatnot bought from the market. The milk used in them is consumed indirectly. Our total per person per year consumption of milk was 168kg in 2018-19. This has risen from about 150kg in 2000-01. It was 107kg in 1949-50 showing considerable improvement since then.

Since milk is the single largest contributor in expenditure, its contribution to inflation should be very high. Thanks to milk price behaviour, it is seldom in the news as opposed to sugar and wheat, whose price trend, besides hurting the poor is also exploited for gaining political mileage. According to PBS, milk prices have risen from Rs82.50 per litre in October 2018 to Rs104.32 in October 2021. This is a three-year rise of 26.4pc, or per annum rise of 8.1pc. Another blessing related to milk is that the year-to-year variation in its prices is much lower than that of other food items. The three-year rise in CPI is about 30pc, or an average of 9.7pc per year till last month. Clearly, milk prices have contributed to containing inflation to a single digit during this period.

Next to milk is wheat and atta which constitute about 11.2pc of the monthly food expenditure — less than half of milk. Wheat and atta are our staple food and their direct consumption by the average household is 7kg per capita (84kg per capita per year). As we also eat naan from the tandoors, bread from bakeries etc, our indirect consumption of wheat and atta is 41kg per capita. Our total consumption of wheat and atta is about 125kg per capita per year. Our per person per day calorie intake has risen from about 2,078 in 1949-50 to 2,400 in 2001-02 and 2,580 in 2020-21. The per capita per day protein intake in grams increased from 63 to 67 to about 75 during these years. Does this indicate better health? To answer this, let us look at how we devour ghee and sugar. Also remember that each person requires a minimum of 2,100 calories and 60g of protein per day.

Undoubtedly, ghee, cooking oil and sugar have a special place in our culture. We are familiar with Urdu idioms mentioning ghee and shakkar. Two relate to our eating habits. We greet good news by saying ‘Aap kay munh may ghee shakkar’, which literally means that may your mouth be filled with ghee and sugar. We envy the fortune of others by saying ‘Panchon oonglian ghee mei’ (all five fingers immersed in ghee, or having the best of both worlds). These sayings reflect not only our eating trends, but also the inflation burden of the rising prices of these three items — ghee, cooking oil and sugar. Recall any wedding dinner. Ghee is floating in our plates.

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 24, 2022 at 5:47pm

Comparative performance: Global Hunger Index


https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/persistence-food-insecurity-ma...

India has been performing poorly in global rankings of hunger. It ranks 101st out of 116 countries on the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2021......

The Global Hunger Report 2021 gives comparable GHI scores for four separate years between 2000 and 2021. 2 Table 1 compares the GHI for India with four countries: all ranking better than India currently but with GHI scores close to or worse than India’s in 2000. This shows the relatively slow improvement in India. Cambodia which in 2000 had a GHI of 41.1, higher than India’s 38.8, managed by 2021 to reduce its score to 17, while India could lower it to only 27.5. During this period Cambodia moved from the ‘Alarming’ to the ‘Moderate’ category, while India moved from ‘Alarming’ to ‘Serious’.

When the GHI was released a few months back, India put out an official press note claiming that the index used flawed methodology and was not a true reflection of hunger in the country. The main official objections were two-fold. First, that the GHI was based on a phone survey conducted on a small sample and therefore not representative of the true picture in the country. This was not true. The authors of the report clarified that anyone who read the report could see that the data used were not from any phone survey, but, rather, based on official indicators from government or UN sources.

The second objection, which representatives of the NITI Ayog and others have written about, is that while the GHI is called a ‘hunger’ index, it actually measures malnutrition. This is nothing but engaging in semantics while trying to distract attention from the more substantial issues. As explained by the Global Hunger Report, “Hunger is usually understood to refer to the distress associated with a lack of sufficient calories. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines food deprivation, or undernourishment, as the consumption of too few calories to provide the minimum amount of dietary energy that each individual requires to live a healthy and productive life, given that person’s sex, age, stature, and physical activity level.” The GHI includes measures of population undernourishment, childhood stunting, childhood wasting and child mortality and tries to capture it in a broader sense of food insecurity and malnutrition.

Hunger in India
Measuring hunger has been deeply controversial in India and globally, but the most common way in which it is done is by looking at adequacy of food consumption in calorie terms. Some analysis based on the data from the 2017–18 NSS consumption expenditure survey, as available in a leaked report (and analysed in the The India Forum), showed that mean consumption expenditure, as well as the mean consumption expenditure on food, declined between 2011–12 and 2017–18. These declines in average per capita consumption expenditures on food most likely reflect an increase in hunger amongst the poor (Subramanian, 2019). A decline in real food consumption expenditure also indicates an increase in poverty.

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As can be seen in Figure 2, while the undernourishment in India showed a secular decline from around 2005 onwards, the last few years have shown a reversal of this trend. Both as a proportion and in absolute numbers, there has been an increase in the prevalence of undernutrition after 2016. The prevalence of undernutrition, taken as a three-year moving average, was 13.8% for 2016–18, going up to 14% in 2017–19, and 15.3% in 2018–20. This data does not take into account the pandemic years, which based on all indications can be expected to have been worse.

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 24, 2022 at 7:14pm

‘Diet of Average Indian Lacks Protein, Fruit, Vegetables’
On average, the Indian total calorie intake is approximately 2,200 kcals per person per day, 12 per cent lower than the EAT-Lancet reference diet's recommended level.

https://www.india.com/lifestyle/diet-of-average-indian-lacks-protei...

Compared to an influential diet for promoting human and planetary health, the diets of average Indians are considered unhealthy comprising excess consumption of cereals, but not enough consumption of proteins, fruits and vegetables, said a new study.Also Read - Autistic Pride Day 2020: Diet Rules For Kids With Autism

The findings by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and CGIAR research program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) broadly apply across all states and income levels, underlining the challenges many Indians face in obtaining healthy diets. Also Read - Vitamin K Rich Food: Include These Items in Your Daily Diet to Avoid Uncontrolled Bleeding

“The EAT-Lancet diet is not a silver bullet for the myriad nutrition and environmental challenges food systems currently present, but it does provide a useful guide for evaluating how healthy and sustainable Indian diets are,” said the lead author of the research article, A4NH Program Manager Manika Sharma. Also Read - Experiencing Hair Fall? Include These Super-foods in Your Daily Diet ASAP

“At least on the nutrition front we find Indian diets to be well below optimal.”

The EAT-Lancet reference diet, published by the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, and Health, implies that transforming eating habits, improving food production and reducing food wastage is critical to feed a future population of 10 billion a healthy diet within planetary boundaries.

While the EAT-Lancet reference diet recommends eating large shares of plant-based foods and little to no processed meat and starchy vegetables, the research demonstrates that incomes and preferences in India are driving drastically different patterns of consumption.

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 25, 2022 at 10:08am

Why is India's economy looking so bleak?

https://qz.com/india/2170008/why-is-indias-economy-looking-so-bleak/

https://vigourtimes.com/why-is-indias-economy-looking-so-bleak-quar...


There's an apocalyptic nature to the way things feel and look right now.

Overnight news of a crash and slide for the Dow and Nasdaq bring fears every morning of another stock market rout in India. The rupee is in completely new and scary territory now slip- sliding towards the 80-mark to the dollar. Crude has shown no inclination to ease back from the triple digits it now trades in.

All this is what grabs headlines and eyeballs. But to call a spade a spade, the stock market represents and holds only a minuscule fraction of India's population and investing community within it. It is undoubtedly called the barometer of sentiment but whose sentiment does it reflect and is it only now that things have turned bad?

Go back a few years to the red-letter demonetisation day on Nov. 8, 2016. On the face of it, both the country and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party government emerged intact from a dangerous experiment. What went unnoticed—or certainly, unreported by mainstream media—was the devastation it wreaked on small and medium businesses. That devastation has turned into a slow but fatal grind, pulverising business after business.

What sucking out cash from the system did in 2016, was followed up by a patchwork rollout of the Goods and Services Tax in 2017. More pressure. The final nail in the coffin has been the insidious rise and rise of inflation. In April this year, inflation at the retail level surged to an eight-year high of 7.79%. The wholesale price index hit a record high of 15.1%, the outcome of rising prices of vegetables, fruits, milk, manufacturing, fuel, and power.

Lest we begin to blame it all on the war in Ukraine, inflation has remained in double digits for 13 months in a row now. A red flag that was waving in the air for many months, and now seems to have the Reserve Bank of India's full attention.

Biting the bullet

Large businesses have responded. Consumer goods companies have decided to bite the cost bullet. Prices of goods have been…


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Key lessons
But it leaves important lessons to think about. What did I learn from this, was I truly looking at investing when I picked up the small cap stock? Do I know enough to be trading in the futures and options market, sharp as a knife and fast as a bullet? A young India that was bedazzled by the cryptocurrency market will also have to collect its broken earnings and dreams. India has been one of the world’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency markets, increasing by 641% between July 2020 and June 2021. Much of that was India’s young population, from the B and C cities. In the crash burn we have seen this year, many young traders have been left singed.

The ultimate lesson, I believe, is this. When there is a cancer in the system, it will spread. For all those who believed the market, or one segment of the economy, would continue to grow even as the broader market and population was crumbling under the pressure of the last few years, it has not worked that way.

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 25, 2022 at 10:09am

Why is India's economy looking so bleak?

https://qz.com/india/2170008/why-is-indias-economy-looking-so-bleak/

https://vigourtimes.com/why-is-indias-economy-looking-so-bleak-quar...


Biting the bullet
Large businesses have responded. Consumer goods companies have decided to bite the cost bullet. Prices of goods have been increased, package sizes will get smaller, and downtrading—switching from expensive products to cheaper alternatives—is the new reality for daily household purchases. The construction of homes will get more expensive as the prices of cement, transportation, materials all climb higher.

Do small businesses have the same luxury and leeway? Not really. In an interview to the Business Standard, Jitubhai Vakharia, the president of the South Gujarat Textile Processors’ Association in Surat, explained how the input cost of coal has almost doubled. The cost of dyes and chemicals have increased by 25% to 40% and the price of some chemicals like sodium hydrosulphite of soda or discharging agent like safolite have increased by 140% to 150%. Input costs have increased he says.

So can they raise costs? Increasing prices is difficult he admitted, as demand is already low in the market.

What that means is, more business could be forced to close, more jobs are lost, and more households are left wondering how they will get by. The government’s own data shows that 5,907 businesses registered as micro, small, and medium enterprises were shut during financial years 2020-’21 and 2021-’22. In the 2021 financial year, 330 MSMEs were shut down.

It is perhaps with an eye to this simmering discontent around price rise and seeing the neighbouring country of Sri Lanka quite literally go up in flames over spiralling inflation, that finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on Saturday an excise cut in petrol and diesel taxes and a 200 rupees ($2.58) subsidy for those buying cooking gas cylinders, along with some customs duty cuts. While the move is being criticised as an optical illusion, the Narendra Modi government has clearly sensed dissatisfaction around the way costs have risen and moved to do some damage control.

The latest State of Inequality in India Report by the economic advisory council to the prime minister had these observations to share. The income of the top 1% shows a growing trend, while that of the bottom 10% is shrinking—the top 1% of income earners in India cumulatively earn more than three times of what is earned by the bottom 10%. Within that, a person who earns an average of Rs25,000 per month is now part of the top 10% of the total wages earned bracket. What does that mean for the others, what are people earning and how are they getting by in an environment of continuous cost rise?

This economic strife also begets the question, why doesn’t it translate into protests, electoral punishment? Why aren’t people voting out governments when they feel the pressure of rising costs, no jobs, and less and less ability to spend?

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 25, 2022 at 10:11am

Why is India's economy looking so bleak?

https://qz.com/india/2170008/why-is-indias-economy-looking-so-bleak/

https://vigourtimes.com/why-is-indias-economy-looking-so-bleak-quar...

This economic strife also begets the question, why doesn’t it translate into protests, electoral punishment? Why aren’t people voting out governments when they feel the pressure of rising costs, no jobs, and less and less ability to spend?

Difficult conditions
One, this does not have a singular unified impact. In the run-up to the Uttar Pradesh elections, many roving reporters thrust their mikes into the faces of people. What do you worry about, what is a concern, they were asked? “Mehengai,” the rising cost of living, the interviewees would respond. Prices of cooking oils like mustard oil and sunflower oil had risen, gas cylinder prices were up, jobs were scarce and running a household was an uphill struggle. India’s overall unemployment rate rose to 7.83% in April, up from 7.6% in March.

Yet, it did not impact voting choices and the ruling state government was elected back with a clear majority. It is because my inflation is not your inflation. My household cost pressures are not yours. I have a job, but you don’t. Cost rise is too fluid and wide a challenge to cement together an entire population into making a political choice borne of it.

There is also the insulation that welfare schemes have created for the very poor. Food schemes, cash transfers, and some workdays through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee, which assures rural families of 100 days of work a year. The slice left vulnerable and besieged is India’s large and diverse middle class that is now feeling the pain. Households that own a motorcycle and dream of a small car, households that want to move from their one-bedroom rented accommodation, to a two-bedroom home of their own.

The rise of political marketing
Two, we now have a changed polity. With close to 500 million users, India has the most WhatsApp users. All of whom have been nursed with consistent messaging around political agenda. If the last 10 years have seen economic missteps, they have equally been marked by the rise of marketing in politics. More than Rs6,500 crore was spent on elections by 18 political parties between 2015 and 2020. Of this, political parties spent more than Rs3,400 crore or 52.3% on publicity alone.

The Bharatiya Janata Party spent 56% (over Rs3,600 crore) of the total election outlay by all 18 parties in the five years and Congress spent 21.41% (over Rs1,400 crore). In the last five years, the BJP has spent 54.87% (over Rs2,000 crore) of their total election expenditure on “advertisements and publicity” compared to 7.2% (Rs260 crore) on marches, rallies, and other campaigns. The Congress, in the five-year period, has spent 40.08% (Rs 560 crore) of the total election expenditure on election-related publicity.

Does all this matter? Higher public expenditure on publicity and advertising in an election year is a major factor for a state government to retain power, In a May 2021 State Bank of India report titled “State Elections: How Women are Shaping India’s Destiny,” Soumya Kanti Ghosh. the Group Chief Economic Adviser, writes that in most of the states, on an average in order to be re-elected, incumbent governments make huge spends in an election year.

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 25, 2022 at 10:11am

Why is India's economy looking so bleak?

https://qz.com/india/2170008/why-is-indias-economy-looking-so-bleak/

https://vigourtimes.com/why-is-indias-economy-looking-so-bleak-quar...

Does all this matter? Higher public expenditure on publicity and advertising in an election year is a major factor for a state government to retain power, In a May 2021 State Bank of India report titled “State Elections: How Women are Shaping India’s Destiny,” Soumya Kanti Ghosh. the Group Chief Economic Adviser, writes that in most of the states, on an average in order to be re-elected, incumbent governments make huge spends in an election year.


In a few states where publicity expenditure was low in election year, the incumbent government mostly lost the election. It may be fair to say then that this marketing blitz can mould voter opinion, whether it is to highlight the benefits of a regime—or to demonise a section of the population.

What does all this have to do with the stock market that’s battling its own losses and the fear of a prolonged bear trading patch? It is an ugly situation for markets, there’s no denying. Selling in the equity universe will come in waves and lashes, this purging of stocks, prices, and holdings. However, this too shall pass. It may leave the markets in a dull trading range for many months where things move neither higher nor lower. Or it may bounce back faster than expected, egged on by better global news and the return of the prodigal foreign institutional investors.

Key lessons
But it leaves important lessons to think about. What did I learn from this, was I truly looking at investing when I picked up the small cap stock? Do I know enough to be trading in the futures and options market, sharp as a knife and fast as a bullet? A young India that was bedazzled by the cryptocurrency market will also have to collect its broken earnings and dreams. India has been one of the world’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency markets, increasing by 641% between July 2020 and June 2021. Much of that was India’s young population, from the B and C cities. In the crash burn we have seen this year, many young traders have been left singed.

The ultimate lesson, I believe, is this. When there is a cancer in the system, it will spread. For all those who believed the market, or one segment of the economy, would continue to grow even as the broader market and population was crumbling under the pressure of the last few years, it has not worked that way.

It is also true that we still remain a nation of great potential, a large working force, a diverse geography, a huge market size. But will India continue to walk into the future with only a rich few, or will we take all our people with us? As James Baldwin wrote, “Neither love nor terror makes one blind; indifference makes one blind.”

This article first appeared on Scroll.in. We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 25, 2022 at 10:31am

As the wealthy converge on Davos to discuss the world’s problems, a case for taxing the rich

Harsh Mander and Prabhat Patnaik discuss funding universal social and economic rights, not just a universal basic income, in a time of widening inequalities.

https://scroll.in/article/1024582/as-the-wealthy-converge-on-davos-...


For instance, you look at per capita food intake. The proportion of people [consuming] below 2,200 calories per day in rural India, which is supposed to be the benchmark for poverty, in 1993-’94 was about 58%. You look at 2011, it was 68%. In urban India, corresponding, it was 57% and 65%.


What has happened now is that education and healthcare are much more expensive, none of which gets captured in the consumer price index. As a result, people are forced to spend so much on these that they actually skimp on buying food.


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Mander: I was struck by the latest World Development Report. It is perhaps the first major admission by the Bretton Woods set of institutions [World Bank and International Monetary Fund] that we may not be able to produce jobs, that jobless growth is actually not an aberration, but is almost written into the nature of [the] neoliberal model. But the solution that they want to give is universal basic income.

Prabhat Patnaik: Exactly. However, suppose everybody gets a certain amount of money, but with no school or government hospital within their radius. In that case, the idea of simply handing you money just does not help. It is very important that actual essential services and commodities must be made available to everybody, including work opportunities. And this is what the welfare state actually promised you.

Harsh Mander: Suppose I have a child with disabilities, I have many more economic needs than someone who does not. So a basic income and top-up idea is also blind to those questions.

My next question is with the conversation about universal social rights, which rights are we speaking about?

Prabhat Patnaik: Well, you can think in terms of a very wide range of rights. In my writings, I have essentially been talking about five economic rights. But I am not sticking to just those five, and neither am I saying that these five should take priority over other kinds of rights.

Harsh Mander: And these five are: employment, healthcare, school education, pensions, and food and nutrition.

Prabhat Patnaik: That’s right. So I am talking about just these five because I made some calculations based on them.

Mander: Just looking at the politics in India today, I think we are passing through such a difficult moment. There was a cartoon I saw the other day where there is a curfew outside and a man trapped inside. He is begging to get out. He is the economic crisis. Today, we see a different face of the economic crisis. A crisis in which if I do not have work or all my social rights, at least I am becoming a part of a “powerful Hindu nation”.

Elsewhere in the world, we are seeing the rise of political leaders very similar to the one we have elected. So, do you even feel that the conversations around universal social rights are going to emerge?

Patnaik: I think the Hindu Right has hijacked the political discourse. In some sense, we have to recapture the political discourse around the question of the improvement of the economy and the living of the people.

Mander: This has been a fascinating discussion. But the last question I have for you is about the critique on the idea of utopia since it is not feasible and we don’t have the money. As an economist, you have done your calculations. Obviously, we will have to reorganise how we spend the existing public resources. But how would we be actually able to raise the kind of resources that we require for the idea of universal social rights, even if we stay with just the five you spoke about?

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 27, 2022 at 7:46am

Modi Govt @ 8
SUBHASH CHANDRA GARG

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/opinion/modi-govt-8-indian-econom...


‘Sabka saath, sabka vikas’ defined and operationalised an ambitious, universal, and effective redistribution agenda.

The PM Awas Yojana for housing, Saubhagya for electricity, Ujjwala for LPG connections, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan for toilets, and Ayushman Bharat for medical insurance reached out to all without critical basic facilities, and delivered benefits without discrimination.

The universal Aadhaar identity, and widespread use of fintech for direct benefit transfers, made delivery of benefits efficient, and eliminated corruption.

The adoption of ambitious renewable energy goals — first 175 GW by 2022, and then 450 GW of by 2030 — offered hope of saving India from pollution, and controlling carbon emissions.

Despite some unnecessary convulsions such as demonetisation, India’s economic management was indeed stellar in Modi’s first term.

Wobbly Second Term

Come the second term of the BJP-led NDA government, starting 2019, and the economic performance is facing headwinds.

Imposition of the most stringent and unimaginative lockdown in March 2020 was a disastrous self-goal. Scars of that lockdown are still visible. Consumer demand and value added in sectors such as construction and services have still not returned to pre-COVID-19 levels.

The government’s privatisation programme has floundered. Privatisation of two banks announced in the Budget 2021 has not seen any tangible progress. The Bill to amend the bank nationalisation law is nowhere in sight. The privatisation of BPCL is off the table. Privatisation of CONCOR, Shipping Corporation, IDBI Bank, a general insurance company etc. are all stuck. Privatisation transactions of Pawan Hans and CEL have been stopped after announcing acceptance of bids.

Monetisation in the railways, pipelines, and the power sector is stalled. The government is wrongly branding coal and gas block allocations as monetisation of assets.

It is expanding instead of downsizing. Many new ministries and departments have been created; while none closed or downsized. This government is on the defensive. It had to backtrack on agriculture reforms. Consolidated labour laws, despite having been enacted more than 20 months earlier, are in cold storage.

Import duties on cells and modules, key ingredients for executing the renewable energy agenda, have been raised putting the renewable energy programme in jeopardy. Delhi continues to be a pollution nightmare in winters.

In The $10 Trillion Dream, I have called India’s economic performance “the worst first three years of any Government”.

The Way Ahead

India is in a state of policy stasis.

The economic populism of Aatmanirbhar Bharat has dragged India into a quagmire. Tariffs were raised and imports banned in the name of Aatmanirbhar Bharat. India’s imports and trade deficit, however, have risen massively. Foreign portfolio investors have withdrawn their investments in droves.

The government’s policy to control inflation is wobbly and jerky. It is raising export duties, and reducing import duties. After steel, others will likely follow. The government has banned the export of wheat despite India carrying large surplus stocks.

The government is now running one of the largest fiscal deficits in India’s history. Wholesale inflation is at its worst in 30 years. Consumer inflation is well above tolerable limits, and is likely to stay there for many months. India’s foreign exchange reserves are dwindling.

It seems quite likely that remaining two years of the Narendra Modi government will be low growth and high inflation years. Even if one assumes growth of 7 percent a year, India’s GDP would grow at about 3.5 percent a year in Modi’s second five-year term. It will be the lowest growth performance of any government in many decades.

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 29, 2022 at 5:14pm

CNN GPS with Fareed Zakaria May 15, 2022


https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/fzgps/date/2022-05-15/segment/01



ZAKARIA: Ian, I've got to ask you --

BREMMER: I'd want to jump in on that.

ZAKARIA: Yes. Do it quickly because I have got to ask you about China and Chinese economic growth, which seems veering, you know, very, very low because of the insistence on zero-COVID.

BREMMER: Absolutely true. The quick point I wanted to make is so much of the narrative we've heard from the developing world is, you know, you care about Ukraine because they are European, because they are White, 6 million refugees.

You didn't care about the Syrians. You don't care about Yemen or Afghanistan. The reality is this is a vastly more important conflict for the developing world because of the inter dependence of the global economy.

They should care more about Russia/Ukraine. They should be more invested precisely because this is going to hurt them in a way that Yemen and Syria and Afghanistan really didn't. And the world isn't there today. We have to spread that narrative.

But China, I mean, this is a huge problem. This is the second largest economy in the world and they were the most effective in responding to COVID once they admitted that COVID existed for the first year. They're the only ones that had growth. But they have stuck with it and they have stuck with the same exact zero-COVID policy when they don't have the vaccines, when they don't have the therapeutics. And now that's really causing more supply chain challenges on top of everything we've just been discussing.

And, by the way, this is fixable. The fact is that the single greatest excess commodity we have in the world right now -- it's not energy, it's not food, it's not fertilizer, it's mRNA vaccines for COVID. We can't get them in the arms of Africans because we don't have the infrastructure on the ground. The Chinese do but they refuse to accept international coordination and help because they're so angry at the way they were blamed. And they're so angry about the way that COVID has gone through the rest of the world while the Chinese locked it down. As a consequence we are all suffering. We can't coordinate on COVID.

ZAKARIA: Thoughts on China. You know, it's aiming for zero-COVID. It appears to be getting zero economic growth. I mean, that's an exaggeration but how bad is that?

BEDDOES (The Economist): I think it's pretty bad and I think it is clearly you cannot have zero-COVID. This is a strategy that in the long run cannot work. But unfortunately in a year where Xi Jinping wants to become the national party Congress later this year, effectively ruler for life, I think we're getting to the stage where no one dares tell him, no one dares say this is not going to work.

[10:45:10]

And if you mix that -- if you add to that -- the clamp-down on tech that he did in the last few months, I'm increasingly worried that China is moving towards sort of slightly erratic, autocratic culture, personal autocratic system of government. And so I'm deeply worried about China.

But just to end on a really good note and particularly to you, Fareed, I have just been in India. And I am much, much more upbeat in India.

ZAKARIA: You have an amazing cover story (in the Economist Magazine)

BEDDOES: Our cover story this week in India is they could blow it. You know, the Modi government could blow it but India has the ingredients both luck -- because of China's travails and because the world wants an alternative supplier. Because they benefited from their huge investment in digital tech, because a lot of things that are going right for them, I'm very, very upbeat on the potential for India. This year is going to be the fastest growing economy in the world and it could be the next 10 years if they play things right.

BREMMER: One hundred twenty degrees Fahrenheit in Delhi right now, Fareed. I don't know.

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