Indian economy shrank 7.3% in fiscal year 1920-21, its worst performance since independence in 1947. Nearly 230 million middle class Indians have slipped below the poverty line, constituting a 15 to 20% increase in poverty since Covid-19 struck last year, according to Pew Research. Middle class consumption has been a key driver of economic growth in India. Erosion of the middle class will likely have a significant long-term impact on the country's economy. “India, at the end of the day, is a consumption story,” says Tanvee Gupta Jain, UBS chief India economist, according to Financial Times. “If you never recovered from the 2020 wave and then you go into the 2021 wave, then it’s a concern.”
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| India's Economic Performance Since Independence. Source: Bloomberg |
Mainstream Indian media have long been afraid to cover the incompetence and failures of Prime Minister Modi's government. But this is finally changing with the COVID pandemic hitting India's newsrooms. Dozens of Indian reporters and their family members have died after being infected with coronavirus.
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| Middle Class Decline in India, China. Source: Pew Research |
The disastrous turn in the situation on the ground couple with the change in media coverage have brought focus on Modi government's failed policies in handling the deepening health crisis and its devastating impact. The images of large numbers of people gasping for breath and dying on the streets for lack of oxygen have shocked the world. The covid crisis has exposed the hollowness of India's super-power delusions fed by the country's western boosters who see it as a counterweight to China. An example of such western propaganda is a recent novel by retired US Admiral Janes Stavirides.
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| Increase in Debt-to-GDP Ratio During Pandemic. Source: Business Standard |
Prime Minister Modi's government has taken on significant debt to cope with the crisis of covid pandemic. As a result, India's debt-to-gp has increased 17% to 89.3%, the third highest among emerging economies. By contrast, Pakistan's debt-to-gdp has risen by a mere 1.6% to 87.2% during the pandemic, according to figures released by the IMF.
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| Modi's Hindutva Rate of Growth in India |
The authors of "2034: A Novel of the Next World War" portray Indians as heroes whose statesmen-ship de-escalates World War III, negotiates peace and helps India emerge as the new global superpower. Patel, the Indian uncle character of the Indian-American deputy national security advisor Sandeep Chowdhury tells him, "America’s hubris has finally gotten the better of its greatness." The authors imagine the United Nations headquarters moves from New York to Mumbai after the war. Had this book been written after watching thousands of Indian victims of COVID19 gasping for breath and dying daily on the streets of New Delhi, I think Ackerman and Stavridis would have conceived and developed a completely different plot line for their novel.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
South Asia Investor Review
India Tops World Hunger Charts
Is India Superpoor or Superpower?
Rape as a Political Weapon Used By Hindutva
Hindu Nationalism Inspired By Nazism, Fascism
Rise of Islamophobia After Sept 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks
700,000 Indian Soldiers Versus 7 Million Kashmiris
Modi's Kashmir Blunder and India-Pakistan Nuclear Conflict
Is India a Paper Elephant?
Howdy Modi Rally Exposes Indian-Americans to Charges of Hypocrisy
Modi's Extended Lockdown in Indian Occupied Kashmir
Hinduization of India
Brievik's Hindutva Rhetoric
Indian Textbooks
India's RAW's Successes in Pakistan
Riaz Haq Youtube Channel
VPOS Youtube Channel
Sir thank you for sharing this useful information ,but the problem is that no matter how much I try to convince these Indians that their economy is badly suffering under BJP government ,still many of these
ReplyDeleteIndians turn their blind eyes to these facts and they try to cover up the weaknesses and mistakes of BJP party . They are not willing to admit how their BJP government is trying to fool their public .
Pls note that their economy was even not performing well before COVID .
Sir I have debated with Indians alot about their economy ,Indians very proudly claim that their economy is 3rd largest in the world and the economy of Pakistan is 25th largest in the world . So they mean to say that their is no comparison of economy of Pakistan with India .
ReplyDeleteCan you pls throw some light on this ?
Can you pls explain how should I respond to these Indians ?
I need your help in these debates.
Thanks
Ahmed: "Indians very proudly claim that their economy is 3rd largest in the world and the economy of Pakistan is 25th largest in the world"
ReplyDeleteSo why are Indians so miserable? Why are Pakistanis happier, healthier and better fed than Indians?
All key indices from World Happiness Index to World Hunger Index to COVID deaths show that Pakistanis are significantly better off than Indians.
Pakistan consistently ranks better than India on World Happiness Index.
https://www.riazhaq.com/2021/03/pakistans-happiness-index-score-suffers.html
India ranks 94th among 107 nations ranked by World Hunger Index in 2020. Other South Asian have fared better: Pakistan (88), Nepal (73), Bangladesh (75), Sri Lanka (64) and Myanmar (78)
https://www.riazhaq.com/2020/10/india-tops-south-asia-hunger-chart-amid.html
Pakistan has done a much better job of managing COVID pandemic than India
https://www.riazhaq.com/2021/04/pre-covid-fiction-india-wins-us-china.html
India vs Pakistan Coronavirus cases by Date
Updated: 13 minutes ago
https://georank.org/covid/india/pakistan
There are 2,"Four" letter words - which will be etched on the minds and torsos,of Indians till the EOD.
ReplyDeleteMODI and DOOM !
From (M)odi (O)ut To (D)oom (I)ndia in 2016,to (M)odi (O)f course he (D)oomed (I)ndia,in 2021 !
From Demo,GST,Make In India,Balakot,Galwan,Kashmir and then COVID - the FINAL nail in the coffin - from which,even Lazarus and Dionysus,will not be able to resurrect.
But the Indian slaves - there is NOT a whimper - from these weasels ! They are the ideal slaves ! MODI and his minions in the media, have brainwashed 130 crore Indians ! This explains the successful rule of the Mughals and Brits - and also,Y Indians pray to monkeys and stone idols - even after 5000 years (And are mighty proud of it) !
It also explains Y Indian Cyber coolies are "so-called", successful toilet cleaners, in USA and the EU.They are exceptional slaves there,as the MASTER IS SUPER EFFICIENT.In India, their MASTER - MODI,is like them, a son of a dishwasher !
COVID has blown to smithreens all the MYTHS of India.It is NOT just the GDP - but the CHARACTER of Indians (liars and thieves),pathetic infrastructure (Worse than Somalia), treating their own as dregs (exporting VAXES and dumping dead on streets) and the decrepit Indian Intellect (TOTAL DISASTER OF PLANNING).
The catalysis of the Indian Growth,20 years ago,was the monetary easing in the US and the China Resources boom.That is over - AND INDIANS HAVE BEEN LEFT TO DRY,in the SAHARA - w/o food,water and clothes.And they are writhing and screaming - and there is no aid !
The Indian GDP decline of 7% is meaningless,as the Govtt expenditure and infra spend,is a part of it ! If you exclude the Govtt expenditure - then the scale of the disaster is APPARENT.IT IS NOT JUST A NUMBER - as millions of ENTERPRISES (and therefore sentients) WILL NEVER RECOVER - EVER ! The TYCOONS will thrive AND THE SME DECIMATED have lost their ENTERPRISE FOREVER TO THE LARGE CORPORATES - which was the MODI COVID PLAN - AS LARGE CORPORATES PAY GST AND TAX ! (Take the GRAND VISTA PROJECT - it will come in the GDP calculations - but besides the suppliers and 500 labourers - the rest of India,will be UNTOUCHED by it !)
The GOI feels that the SME and Small Business , a WASTE OF TIME AND RESOURCES,AND NEED HUGE GOVTT ADMIN SUPPORT AND SUBSIDIES,AND THEY PAY NO TAX !
So Modi does NOT even pretend to care !
Regarding that FOOL Sandeep Chowdhry - there is only 1 Chowdhry in India - whose words can be taken seriously,and that is the "Buxom Bombshell Lady Hypatia of India" - Ms Sapna Chowdhry !
Re Ackerman and his lost tribes of Disneyland - Do the Americans REALLY think that the Indian Toilet Holec,an stand up to PRC ?
REALLY,or are they using the Indians like Guinea Pigs ?
If they REALLY believe this Cow Piss Cola - the America will be in serious trouble !dindooo hindoo
I love America But .......
The world is again mystified by the dramatic fall in the Indian COVID cases from 410,000 (30 days ago) to 150,000 today.
ReplyDeleteThis is again a Modi Miracle Concoction,of Lies,Perfidy and Cow Piss Cola.
What is the Miracle here ?
Step 1 - The COVID is in the villages and small towns - where there are no Tests or no Testing Infra.That lowers the effective target area of infections - and thus the COVID COUNT.
Step 2 - The places of HIGH COVID concentration are ALL UNDER LOCKDOWNS.In a Lockdown,there are no congregations,and so, the testing target population is reduced,and so,the number of cases,also reduce
Step 3 - INCREASED testing in LOW COVID areas,so that the positivity rate,for the NATION AS A WHOLE,is lowered sharply
Step 4 - Create a fear psychosis,so that the dead in small towns and villages are dumped in the rivers - as the COVID dead,DO NOT get a cremation - AND THAT REDUCES THE COVID DEAD ratio and the absolute count.
Step 5 - PRAY TO COVUD,and it is working ! COVID is NOT BEING DETECTED in the RTPCR - and that lowers the Daily case count.
Bingo !
The Indian VAXES are a disaster,and will peter out soon ! Indians will NOT take the VAXES !
And then,the lockdown will be lifted - and then,the 3 rd wave will COME IN ! dindooohindoo
Anyone remember the word "OXYGEN".Some one in India has made USD 5O Million in 30 days.
India’s external debt was US$ 563.5 billion at the end of December 2020. It recorded a marginal decrease of US$ 0.5 billion over its level at end of December 2019. The external debt to GDP ratio increased to 21.4% at end of December 2020 from 20.1% an year ago.
ReplyDeleteIndia's total foreign exchange (Forex) reserves stand at around US$590.185 Billion on 29 January 2021, the highest ever, with the Foreign Exchange Assets (FCA) component at around US$547.218 Billion, Gold Reserves at around US$36.294 Billion, SDRs (Special Drawing Rights with the IMF) of around US$1.508 Billion and around US$5.165 Billion Reserve Position in the IMF, as per Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) weekly statistical supplement published on 29 January 2021.[3] The Economic survey of India 2014-15 said India could target foreign exchange reserves of US$750 Billion-US$1 Trillion.[4]
1. Indian Public debt is all Rupee denominated. The Indian State does not take foreign debt.(WB/ADB loans are project specific and trivial compared to the size of the economy and public debt.)
ReplyDelete2. Indian Tax to GDP ratio is 17% and this has held up.
Much ado about nothing.
Anon: "Much ado about nothing"
ReplyDeleteReally? Only a Modi Bhakt would be delusional enough to say it's "much ado about nothing".
GDP shrinking by 7.3% is India's worst economic performance since its independence. And the human cost is much much greater in terms of lives and livelihoods.
India’s external debt was US$ 563.5 billion, about the same as its forex reserves, at the end of December 2020. It recorded a marginal decrease of US$ 0.5 billion over its level at end of December 2019. The external debt to GDP ratio increased to 21.4% at end of December 2020 from 20.1% a year ago.
The overall debt is up by 17.3% to 89.3%, among the highest in the world.
Some #Modi Bhakts are trolling his critics. The tragedy unfolding for #Indian-#Americans is nothing to "lol" about as some #Hindutva trolls are doing on #socialmedia while attacking critics of #BJP. Many have lost multiple family members. Read "The Quint"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thequint.com/us-nri-news/unrelenting-covid-19-disparate-realities-for-indian-americans-in-india-and-united-states#read-more
A tech entrepreneur and community activist based in San Francisco Bay Area, Bhushan has lost seven family members in India to COVID-19. While he remains thankful for those recovering, the loss of loved ones has hit him hard.
Bhushan’s aunt passed away, followed by his uncle a few days later. Their California-based daughter and Bhushan’s cousin, Ruchika Kumar wrote in a Facebook post, “Mummy was right in calling papa a copycat. He copied her even in death…”
Indian Americans are an educated and high-income migrant community. Even though most of them have moved to the US willingly for professional opportunities, they always carry a bit of yearning for their motherland in their hearts. Watching India surrender to the virus, have left them bereaved and exasperated.
“The difference is access to life-saving health care. Here (Santa Clara county, California) the guidance was reasonably clear. Data was published, and you could trust the data. Numbers were not being underreported. In India the official figures have no bearing of reality. How do you have faith in what’s going on?” says Sanjiv Sahay.
Desis are constantly swaying between optimism in America and gloom in India. Happy and boisterous social media groups, connecting them with their loved ones in India, have turned into a harbinger of death. Laughter has been replaced by much-needed prayers.
A resident of Foster City in California, Sonia Bhanot was to be in Delhi this spring, to meet her mother and sisters. She felt confident to make the long journey after getting fully vaccinated. She has had to put her travel plans on hold given the public health situation in India.
“I haven’t met my sister after her husband passed away last year. I was hoping to visit. There are family members and close friends in Delhi who have COVID-19. Some are recovering. Hamare liye to COVID khatam hi nahi ho raha. Pehle yahan, ab wahan. I am not removing my mask, even if others do,” says Sonia.
India’s suspect ‘Quad’ credentials. #COVID19 #pandemic has brutally exposed the hollowness of #India’s pretensions to power, status and influence and boasts of being a #vaccine superpower and #pharmacy to the world. #Quad #Modi #US #China #Hindutva #BJP https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2021/06/05/commentary/world-commentary/india-suspect-quad-credentials/
ReplyDeleteA chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue process brings together Japan, Australia, India and the United States as an informal grouping of democracies to cooperate around the vast and critical Indo-Pacific maritime space.
India has always been the weakest link in the chain. Its sizable armed forces equipped with nuclear weapons are a bulwark against China’s much superior military might. Still, it’s a very poor country with a per capita income of only 3% to 5% of the other three; a weak state with limited capacity to govern a billion plus population; and a soft state without the political will to make and implement tough decisions.
The second wave of COVID-19 in April and May is India’s biggest national tragedy and international embarrassment since partition in 1947. The national and world press covered this in graphic detail (more than they would in their own countries), with images of people gasping to death on the streets, bodies piled up awaiting last rites and cremation and mass numbers of corpses floating in the Ganges River, many of which having washed up on its banks. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s carefully cultivated competence bubble has been punctured by the open display of mass ineptitude.
In the wake of this stark and grim reminder of its manifold pathologies and weaknesses, the question must be asked: at which point would India become a liability rather than an asset for the other “Quad” partners? The question is important because the other three are bound together in formal alliances by security treaties and India is not, demonstrating less commitment.
The excitement, expectations and hopes of the Modi government in 2014, with promises of “minimum government, maximum governance” and “sabka sath, sabka viswas, sabka vikash” (with all, with everyone’s trust, development for all), are fading memories. On June 1, India’s official COVID-19 deaths per million was 238 compared to the world average of 457, the U.S. at 1,832, the U.K. at 1,873 and Brazil reporting 2,163.
The crux of the problem thus is not the unmitigated spread of COVID-19 but the lack of a fit-for-purpose public health infrastructure and the availability of medical supplies, equipment and drugs. India is a sobering reminder of why a strong economy is not an optional luxury but an essential requirement for good health.
Modi’s neglect of urgent economic and governance reforms in addition to requirements for a good public health infrastructure — choosing instead to go into a semipermanent campaign mode in every state election and focusing on a Hindu nationalist agenda — further aggravated the COVID-19 misery.
People’s health is vitally dependent on a healthy economy that gives the government the financial wherewithal to create an efficient universal-access public health system. No country achieves better health outcomes by becoming poorer.
The pandemic, for its part, hastened an economic decline that had already begun. According to World Bank figures, India’s annual GDP growth tumbled from 8.3% in 2016 to 4.2% in 2019. It contracted by 7.3% in 2020–2021 and the 2021 GDP forecast has been downgraded by around 17% — the worst among the G20 countries.
India got the worst of both worlds: a smashed economy and a massive COVID-19 toll that peaked in May with the official count recording nearly 400,000 daily new cases and over 4,000 daily new deaths. Recovery will be a long haul on both the disease and the economy front.
Indians and the world, are missing the Gujarati Bania,Modi Magic - and that is OK - as Indians, are as thick, as the Coconut Husk !
ReplyDeleteRemember the 02 crisis ! Then came the O2 imports, and Import of 02 plants, and 02 plants, which run on RENEWABLES !
And SUDDENLY, there is no NEED,for 02 !
THE MYSTERY SOLVED - THE MILLIONS OF USD,HAVE BEEN MADE,BY MODI's COTERIE,AND INDIANS ARE LEFT HIGH AND DRY !
Remember the VAX crisis ? There were no VAX stocks and Indians were REFUSING VAXES - and so,someone said - time to make a billion ! That provided the excuse,to import at inflated rates !
But then,if the VAX were charged, then Indians WOULD DEMAND TO KNOW THE IMPORT COST - SO CHAIWALA SAID - IT IS FREE FOR ALL !
1 Billion Indians get 2 shots at say a cost of USD 5 - WHICH MAKES IT A USD 10 BILLION HIT !
BUT THEN - LO AND BEHOLD - THE VAX ADVANCE IS PAID,THE VAX SUUPLIERS WILL DELAY SUPPLY (AS THERE ARE NO RAW MATERIALS) - AND SO,WHAT DOES CHAIWALA DO ?
MAGIC !
THE NUMBER OF CASES ARE DOWN, FROM 400000 TO 75000 A DAY !
WONDERBAR !
NOW THERE IS NO NEED, FOR A VAX !
AND HERE ALSO,THE 100 MILLION USD, IS MADE !
Indians as a race,were created to be conned and pillaged by invaders and their own ! That is their destiny !
Do Indians deserve Modi and Could Modi have been a success anywhere else - BUT IN INDIA ?
Meanwhile - the entire school education in India is destroyed for the last 1.5 years and will go on for another 1 year at least !
INDIA IS PREPARING A GENERATION OF TOILET CLEANERS ! dindooohindoo
#COVID #pandemic could be #Indian leader #Modi's undoing but he remains wildly popular despite his failure to kickstart #India's staggering #economy, to create millions of new #jobs and to provide #healthcare to India's poorest citizens. #BJP #Hindutva https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/12/asia/india-covid-modi-intl-hnk-cmd/index.html
ReplyDeleteDr. Satyendra Kumar Tiwary thinks of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as superhuman. A leader like Modi comes along "once in 2,500 years," he says, and should be remembered among the greats in India's history, like Mahatma Gandhi, and even the Buddha.
"The world will never see another leader like Modi," said the 47-year-old professor of general surgery from Varanasi, which is both Modi's parliamentary constituency and one of the holiest cities for Hindus. "He is not a man, he's superman. He's a saint."
Like so many Modi supporters, Tiwary boasts that the Prime Minister, at 70, works more than 18 hours a day and has never taken a day off work in 23 years, echoing a claim that senior officials from Modi's Bharatiya Janatiya Party (BJP) have made many times.
It is precisely this image of a hard-working people's man -- with little time for a personal life, but plenty for yoga and his Hindu faith -- that catapulted Modi to a landslide re-election in India's 2019 general vote. His party's unapologetic Hindu nationalist agenda attracted 100 million more votes than the main opposition.
Modi, who has ruled India since 2014, has remained wildly popular despite setbacks in his efforts to kickstart the country's staggering economy, to create millions of new jobs and to provide healthcare to India's poorest citizens.
Dr. Satyendra Kumar Tiwary pinned the blame on state governments for India's coronavirus crisis.
Dr. Satyendra Kumar Tiwary pinned the blame on state governments for India's coronavirus crisis.
But India is now gripped with a catastrophic second wave of Covid-19 that has left its crematoriums overflowing with bodies and put its health system under enormous strain. Modi is taking heat over his mismanagement of the national health crisis, for holding rallies during regional elections with no social distancing or mask-wearing rules, and for failing to prevent the gathering of millions of pilgrims at the Kumbh Mela religious festival, which contributed to one of the country's most dramatic surges in infections.
Just as the pandemic contributed to the defeat of Donald Trump in the US, Modi was "almost certain" to take a hit politically too, said Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University.
"A very large part of the base is hugely disenchanted because they've lost their loved ones. They've lost their siblings, their parents, their children," he said.
Modi's loyal base
Modi may be 70 years old, but he also has legions of young Indian supporters.
Rishabh Mehta, a 24-year-old university student, said he was drawn to Modi's unwavering nationalism and thought well of the leader's achievements on improving India's defense systems.
When asked about the country's high Covid-19 death toll, Mehta said he believed the numbers had been inflated by state leaders seeking to tarnish Modi's image. Mehta believes there is a targeted "campaign going on to defame the ... central government."
Most experts and critics say the opposite, and Indian media organizations are gathering more and more evidence that show country is undercounting the dead, whether deliberately or simply because India is unable to measure the pandemic's true impact.
But Mehta's loyalty has remained strong, even after losing one of his close friends to the virus. Mehta himself took his friend to hospital in the capital, New Delhi, where he described chaotic scenes of "people shouting, people coughing, people crying" in desperation.
"It was a very horrific moment for all of us," he said.
#COVID19 Punctures #Modi’s Aura as Some Supporters Sour on #India’s Strongman. There are few #Indians right now who don’t know, within one degree of separation, somebody who died in the past year. #BJP #Hindutva #Islamophobia #economy #jobs https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-punctures-narendra-modis-aura-as-some-supporters-sour-on-indias-strongman-11623643694?reflink=desktopwebshare_twitter via @WSJ
ReplyDeleteVeteran political experts said the Covid-19 crisis has tarnished Mr. Modi’s aura of invincibility and sparked the kind of vocal public criticism that his government has tried to muzzle in recent years. Indians have taken to social media to rail against Mr. Modi and the BJP, with hashtags such as #ModiResign and #ModiFailsIndia going viral.
“There are few Indians right now who don’t know, within one degree of separation, somebody who died in the past year,” said Irfan Nooruddin, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, a think tank based in Washington. The visuals beamed out from all corners of India—including people dying outside hospitals and dead bodies floating down the Ganges River—serve as a visceral punch reminding every Indian of how badly the government bungled the pandemic, he said.
“The notion that Modi could not be criticized, that you couldn’t really say anything against the government—that has been punctured,” he said. “And that I think is a big step.”
Even Indian media outlets, which in recent years have increasingly shied away from critical coverage of the government, have aggressively covered the breakdown of India’s healthcare system, Mr. Nooruddin said. The Supreme Court has also harshly criticized the government for failing to ensure hospitals had adequate oxygen and other medical care.
The opposition Congress party has repeatedly criticized Mr. Modi’s leadership and the government over the slow pace of vaccination and deficiencies in the country’s healthcare system. “The prime minister is also missing along with vaccines, oxygen and drugs,” opposition leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted last month.
The prime minister’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a spokesman for the BJP, said Mr. Modi’s government has been working to protect the Indian people by ramping up healthcare capacity, working to get oxygen to the areas that need it and creating supply chains to deliver vaccines. He said the farmers’ protests contributed to the spread of the virus and that the state governments, which are largely responsible for regulating healthcare in India, were unprepared for the speed of the surge. To blame the prime minister, he said, “is simply not understanding how governance functions in India.”
South #Indian state of Andhra Pradesh reported over 130,000 deaths in May 2021, or nearly 5X the usual number of deaths reported in the month. Excess mortality reported by the state from January to May 2021 was 34X the official #COVID19 toll in the period. https://scroll.in/article/997427/andhra-pradesh-saw-400-increase-in-deaths-in-may-tamil-nadu-saw-more-modest-excess-mortality
ReplyDeleteDeath registration data shows the second wave of Covid-19 hit Andhra Pradesh much harder than what has been captured in official data.
More limited data available for Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, shows a more modest increase in mortality: between January 1 and June 13, Tamil Nadu registered 129,000 excess deaths over the average, roughly 7.5 times the official reported Covid-19 toll for the same time.
Officially, India has reported 370,000 deaths from Covid, substantially lower than the death tolls in the United States and Brazil, and among the lowest deaths proportionate to its population. India has officially reported just 266 deaths for every million people, as against nearly ten times that number in Brazil.
However, doubts persist over the proportion of its Covid toll that India is able to accurately capture. Some of the undercounting is a legacy of India’s problems with state capacity; even pre-pandemic, India was able to capture only an estimated 86% of all deaths, with death registration as low as 35% in states like Bihar as of 2018.
However, some of it is specific to the pandemic: despite the guidelines of the World Health Organisation and the Indian Council for Medical Research that encourage adopting as liberal a definition of a Covid death as possible, Indian states have systematically adopted an excessively stringent definition – only deaths of people who tested positive for Covid prior to death and died with a typical progression of disease in hospitals are typically counted as India’s Covid dead.
Simultaneously, there is some evidence that routine health services were severely affected. Doctors across the country have reported premature deaths in their patients with chronic disease on account of being unable to access life-saving measures, including dialysis and cancer treatments.
All of this has driven attempts in India to gauge “excess mortality” – the difference between mortality from all causes during the pandemic and in normal years. Across the world, countries make updated all-cause mortality data freely available. The United Kingdom and South Africa are among the countries that publish this data weekly, and Peru recently significantly revised its official count upwards to account for this excess mortality.
Indian states collect all-cause mortality data every day through the Civil Registration System which functions under the Office of the Registrar General of India. The process is decentralised down to the sub-district level in every district in the country. But states are not making this data public.
CRS data for Madhya Pradesh accessed by Scroll.in showed that Madhya Pradesh saw over 160,000 reported deaths in May 2021, or nearly five times the usual number of reported deaths in 2018 and 2019.
In all, Madhya Pradesh saw more than twice as many deaths between January 1 to May 31 this year compared to the 2018-’19 average. There were over 180,000 “excess deaths” in 2021 over the usual, and over 42 times the reported Covid death toll for the same period.
#India’s devastating #coronavirus surge turned children into orphans. The full severity of India’s recent wave of infections — now receding at last — is hard to grasp. #COVID #Modi #BJP #economy https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2021/india-coronavirus-orphans/
ReplyDeleteBHOPAL, India — The nights are the hardest.
Five-year-old twins Ruhi and Mahi go to sleep late. In the dark, they often wake up crying or seized with fear.
In the morning, their great-uncle dresses them and combs their hair. They ask him the same question over and over: Where are our parents?
Your mom and dad are with the doctors, he tells the girls. They’re at the hospital.
The truth is too difficult for him to speak. Ruhi and Mahi’s parents are both dead, swept away in a matter of days during the calamity of India’s second wave of coronavirus cases.
The girls’ father, Mohan, known for his helpful nature and devotion to his daughters, died on April 30, his lungs straining on a ventilator at a government-run hospital in this central Indian city.
Three days later their mother, Rita, died at home in a rooftop room with pale yellow walls, crushed by sickness and grief. Her daughters were asleep nearby.
The full severity of India’s recent wave of infections — now receding at last — is hard to grasp. In April and May, the virus overwhelmed hospitals and killed nearly 170,000 Indians, according to official statistics. Experts believe the true figure is far higher.
Perhaps no phenomenon encapsulates the nation’s losses like the number of children orphaned in the surge. What happened to Mohan and Rita’s daughters is not unique: Nearly 600 children in India have lost both parents to covid-19, said Smriti Irani, the government minister for women and child development, in a tweet last month.
Even that figure may understate the tragedy. Across India, more than 3,600 children have been orphaned as a result of covid and other causes since the start of the pandemic, according to an affidavit filed this month by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
Although India’s situation is extreme, the country is far from alone. The pandemic has killed parents of young children around the world. Researchers in the United States used Census Bureau data to estimate that about 43,000 American children had lost a parent to covid since March of last year. There were also families in the United States where both parents died.
In India, the ferocity of the second wave left hospitals too full to treat the sick. Many died because they could not get enough oxygen or other treatment, leaving their families with the unanswerable question of whether their relatives might have been saved with proper care.
Most of the children orphaned in the surge are staying with relatives. A small minority have been placed in institutional care, say child protection authorities. The perils are myriad: Children who lose their parents are at higher risk of depression, dropping out of school and being exploited, experts say.
In April, messages began to circulate on social media allegedly seeking adoptive parents for children whose parents had died of covid. The appeals became so widespread that the authorities issued a warning that such direct adoptions are illegal and could be used for child trafficking.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently announced that the national government would cover educational expenses and provide health insurance to children orphaned by covid, as well as set aside funds they could access upon turning 18. In such trying times, Modi said, according to an official statement, “it is our duty as a society to care for our children.”
#Pakistan donates relief supplies to #Afghanistan to fight dangerous #India variant of #coronavirus. Supplies include oxygen cylinders, oxygen concentrators, ICU ventilators, BIPAPs, digital X-Ray machines, Thermal guns and PPEs kits. #COVID19 https://pajhwok.com/2021/06/17/pakistan-donates-covid-19-ppes-medical-equipment-to-afghanistan/
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1406387850891841537?s=20
KABUL (Pajhwok): Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has handed over Personal Protection Equipment (PPEs) to Afghanistan to combat Covid-19, according to a media report on Thursday.
In a statement issued, the NDMA said that on behalf of the government of Pakistan PPEs and medical equipment have been handed over to the Ambassador of Afghanistan to combat Covid-19.
SAPM Health Dr. Faisal Sultan was the chief guest of the ceremony held here. Special Representative of Prime Minister for Afghanistan Muhammad Sadiq and Ambassador of Afghanistan were also present on the occasion.
The relief items included 500 oxygen cylinders, oxygen concentrators, ICU ventilators, BIPAPs, digital X-Ray machines, Thermal guns and PPEs kits. The SAPM Health highly appreciated NDMA’s effort to deal with emergencies and its role in combating Covid in Pakistan. The Ambassador of Afghanistan while appreciating the role of NDMA also appreciated this timely assistance in helping Afghanistan to control the pandemic.
#India Official Warns of Early Third #COVID Wave As Highly Transmissible & Dangerous #DeltaVariant Spreads Further Faster. The virus is believed to be responsible for India’s “devastating second wave” and continues to pose a high risk to the unvaccinated https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-20/india-offical-warns-of-early-third-covid-19-wave-times-reports
ReplyDeleteIndia may be hit by a third wave of Covid-19 far sooner than predicted because people are ignoring guidelines, the Times of India cited Randeep Guleria, director at the state-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences, as saying.
Infections could start rising again in 12 to 16 weeks, the report quoted Guleria as saying. That compares with the four to five months new waves are expected to take to peak, the Times of India reported on Sunday.
Guleria earlier told a television channel that a third wave could come as early as in six to eight weeks time, according to the report.
He said the highly transmissible Delta variant of the virus is believed to be responsible for India’s “devastating second wave” and continues to pose a high risk to a large section of the population that has not yet been vaccinated, according to the Times of India report.
India’s confirmed coronavirus cases have surpassed 29 million, with more than 380,000 deaths. Experts believe both numbers are vastly undercounted.
ReplyDeleteMr. Biden announced this month plans to donate 500 million coronavirus vaccine doses produced by Pfizer to the rest of the world. Of those doses, 200 million are expected to be exported this year and 300 million in the first half of next year.
Outbreaks in countries such as India and Brazil have underscored the gap in vaccinations between rich and poor countries, with many developing nations still struggling to administer vaccines.
Of those being donated through Covax, 14 million will go to Latin America, 16 million to Asia and 10 million to Africa. The White House also listed more than two dozen countries and regions that will receive doses directly, including Colombia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ukraine, Bosnia, the West Bank and Gaza.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-to-miss-june-target-for-some-covid-19-vaccine-donations-11624306309?mod=searchresults_pos3&page=1
#India's #economy under #Modi. #GDP is shrinking, inflation rising. High budget deficits forcing India to borrow heavily. #BJP #Hindutva #CIOVID #DeltaVariant https://news.yahoo.com/india-economy-seven-years-modi-230103338.html
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1407342206730526721?s=20
Narendra Modi stormed India's political stage with grand promises - of more jobs, prosperity and less red tape.
His thumping mandate - in 2014 and again in 2019 - raised hopes of big bang reforms.
But his economic record, in the seven years he's been prime minister, has proved lacklustre. And the pandemic battered what was an already under-par performance.
Here's how Asia's third-largest economy has fared under Mr Modi, in seven charts.
Growth is sluggish
Mr Modi's avowed GDP target - a $5 trillion (£3.6 trillion) economy by 2025, or roughly $3 trillion after adjusting for inflation - is a pipe dream now.
Independent pre-Covid estimates for 2025 had touched $2.6 trillion at best. The pandemic has shaved off another $200-300bn.
Rising inflation, driven by global oil prices, is also a big concern, economist Ajit Ranade said.
But Covid is not solely responsible.
India's GDP - at a high of 7-8% when Mr Modi took office - had fallen to its lowest in a decade - 3.1% - by the fourth quarter of 2019-20.
A disastrous currency ban in 2016, which wiped out 86% of cash in circulation, and a hasty roll-out of a sweeping new tax code, known as the Goods and Services Tax (GST), hit businesses hard.
This spurred the next big problem.
Joblessness is on the rise
"India's biggest challenge has been a slowdown in investments since 2011-12," said Mahesh Vyas, CEO of the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE). "Then, since 2016, we have suffered too many economic shocks in quick succession."
The currency ban, GST and intermittent lockdowns all reduced employment, he added.
Unemployment climbed to a 45-year high - 6.1% - in 2017-18, according to the last official count. And it has nearly doubled since then, according to household surveys by CMIE, a widely-used proxy for labour market data.
More than 25 million people have lost their jobs since the start of 2021. And more than 75 million Indians have plunged back into poverty, including a third of India's 100 million-strong middle class, setting back half a decade of gains, according to estimates by Pew Research.
Mr Modi's government has also created far short of the 20 million jobs the economy needs every year, Mr Ranade said. India has been adding only around 4.3 million jobs a year for the last decade.
India is not making or exporting enough
'Make in India' - Mr Modi's high-octane flagship initiative - was supposed to turn India into a global manufacturing powerhouse by cutting red tape and drawing investment for export hubs.
The goal: manufacturing would account for 25% of GDP. Seven years on, it's share is stagnant at 15%. Worse, manufacturing jobs went down by half in the last five years, according to the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis.
Exports have been stuck at around $300bn for nearly a decade.
Under Mr Modi, India has steadily lost market share to smaller rivals such as Bangladesh, whose remarkable growth has hinged on exports, largely fuelled by the labour-intensive garments industry.
Mr Modi has also hiked tariffs and turned increasingly protectionist in recent years - in tandem with his rallying cry for "self-reliance".
Infrastructure building is a rare bright spot
Mr Modi's government has been laying 36km (22 miles) of highways a day on average, compared to his predecessor's daily count of 8-11km, said Vinayak Chatterjee, co-founder of infrastructure firm Feedback Infra.
Third wave abating! #Pakistan's #COVID19 positivity rate drops to 1.69%, the lowest in 8 months!! The country last recorded its lowest positivity rate at 1.64% on October 18, 2020. #Coronavirus #pandemic https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/853429-pakistans-covid-19-positivity-rate-drops-to-169-lowest-in-8-months
ReplyDeletePakistan's coronavirus positivity rate is down to 1.69% today, according to daily data issued by the National Command and Operation Center. This is the lowest positivity rate recorded by the country in eight months.
The country last recorded its lowest positivity rate at 1.64% on October 18.
A major decrease was also seen in the daily number of COVID-19 cases detected in Pakistan.
In the last 24 hours, 663 new infections have been detected and 27 people have died from the virus, according to the NCOC.
The NCOC said a total of 39,017 tests for COVID-19 were conducted in the last 24 hours.
The total number of deaths from COVID-19 in the country so far has reached 22,034 and the total number of cases has reached 949,838, while 894,352 people have recovered from the virus so far. The active number of cases currently stands at 33,452.
During the last 24 hours, the most deaths occurred in Punjab followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Out of the 27 deaths, 17 people died on ventilators.
Thanks to #Modi, #India Had a ‘State-Orchestrated Covid Massacre’, says popular #Indian comedian Kunal Kamra.“My people are needlessly dying,” Mr. Kamra says. “Our government has blood on its hands.” #BJP #Hindutva #Islamophobia #Covid https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/opinion/modi-covid-kunal-kamra-india.html?smid=tw-share
ReplyDeleteIn the Opinion video above, Kunal Kamra, an enormously popular stand-up comedian in India, puts all jokes aside and takes a serious look at his government’s handling of the pandemic. His assessment is withering: He accuses the nation’s leadership, especially an overconfident Prime Minister Narendra Modi, of putting political vanity before common sense and opening the door to a devastating resurgence of coronavirus infections that have devastated the country.
India has been struggling for weeks amid this second wave, which has sickened millions, killed hundreds of thousands and overwhelmed the nation’s health care system. At the peak of the crisis, new infections numbered about 400,000 a day, a record-breaking pace.
Since then, the daily counts of infections and deaths have dropped. But Mr. Kamra says that had Mr. Modi and other political leaders responded more quickly and more effectively, a lot of lives and heartache would have been spared.
“My people are needlessly dying,” Mr. Kamra says. “Our government has blood on its hands.”
After #COVID surge, some signs of internal dissent against #India's #Modi. Doing badly in #UttarPradesh would be a major setback for the #BJP, analysts say, and could have a knock-on effect on the next general election. #Hindutva #coronavirus #pandemic https://www.reuters.com/world/india/after-covid-surge-some-signs-internal-dissent-against-indias-modi-2021-06-29/
ReplyDeleteGovind Pasi, a grassroots member of India's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), says he got no help from his connections in the ruling party when his wife contracted coronavirus and died at home for lack of proper treatment.
Now, he says, he is done with the party that has ruled India since 2014 and with its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"I am heart-broken, nobody came to help us when we needed help the most," said Pasi, 45, speaking in Balai village in Uttar Pradesh state. Nearby, on the banks of the Ganges river, scores of bodies of people believed to have died of COVID-19 have washed up.
Anand Awasthi, a district vice president of the BJP, said he was aware of the death of Pasi's wife and that the party was trying to get him monetary compensation. He said there was some confusion around her death relating to whether a government database established she had COVID, but did not have details.
Pasi is among more than a dozen ground and mid-level BJP members who told Reuters they are disillusioned with the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic that has devastated India. In addition, six state lawmakers in Uttar Pradesh have written letters criticising the government for not responding to frantic calls for help from their constituents, which Reuters has reviewed.
A high-profile national level BJP official in New Delhi said he was taking a sabbatical because of the "failings of providing basic medical care, mixed messaging on lockdowns, abysmal medical oxygen cylinder shortages and clear lack of priority".
He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing worries about a backlash for stepping out of line.
The BJP is a mammoth organisation, claiming 150 million members, and Reuters could not determine the degree to which the unhappiness has spread. But it is highly unusual for those within the party to speak out against Modi, who has dominated Indian politics in his seven years in power and whose control of the BJP has been unquestioned.
The BJP headquarters and the prime minister's office did not respond to requests for comment.
Kailash Vijayvargiya, a senior BJP leader who is one of its nine general secretaries, told Reuters he had no knowledge of any unhappiness or dissent within the party.
"The pandemic was tough for everyone and we know some of our workers also lost their loved ones," he said. "At so many levels we have helped each other and there were times when we could not because the situation has been very difficult."
Modi, a Hindu nationalist who gets wide support in the country's majority community, has faced criticism before, including for a shock demonetisation that threw the economy into disarray and haphazard tax reform. But the shortage of hospital beds and medical oxygen in the COVID crisis and the country's stuttering vaccination programme have battered his reputation for action and competence, analysts and opposition leaders say.
Analysts say public anger over the handling of the pandemic coupled with even some disaffection in the party rank-and-file could hurt the BJP when it faces its next political test - an election early next year in politically crucial Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state and currently ruled by the BJP.
#India #Covid: AI shows #Pakistani Twitter prayed for neighbor. Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven study which looked at thousands of tweets from #Pakistan posted between 21 April & 4 May says overwhelming number were indeed positive. #Modi #coronavirus https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57683808
ReplyDeleteIt is perhaps not surprising that the fractious relationship between historic adversaries India and Pakistan has spilled over into social media in recent years.
But at the end of April, as India struggled with a ferocious second wave of Covid-19, citizens on either side of the border shelved their barbs in favour of supportive hashtags like #IndiaNeedsOxygen and #PakistanStandsWithIndia.
Experts say it is well known that supportive hashtags do not always mean positive tweets - users often "hijack" them for anything from trolling to wishing happy birthday to a cricketer or Bollywood star.
But an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven study which looked at thousands of tweets from Pakistan posted between 21 April and 4 May says an overwhelming number were indeed positive.
Researchers, led by Ashiqur KhudaBukhsh of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the US, used machine learning tools to identify the tweets that expressed kindness, empathy and solidarity.
They collected 300,000 tweets with three biggest trending hashtags: #IndiaNeedsOxygen, #PakistanStandsWithIndia and #EndiaSaySorryToKashmir - the last a reference to the long-running dispute over the Himalayan territory. Of these, 55,712 tweets were from Pakistan, 46,651 were from India and the remaining were from around the world.
The researchers then ran the text from these tweets into a "hope speech classifier" - a language processing tool that helps detect positive comments. They looked for patterns to identify if the text had "hostility-diffusing positive hope speech", or words like prayer, empathy, distress and solidarity.
Their study found that tweets containing supportive hashtags originating in Pakistan heavily outnumbered those containing non-supportive hashtags and also had substantially more likes and retweets. Their method also amplified the positive tweets, making it easier to find them quickly.
"Our research showed that there's a universality in how people express emotions. If you search randomly, you'll find positive tweets a little over 44% of the time. Our method throws up positive tweets 83% of the time," Mr KhudaBukhsh said.
#India’s Biggest Job Creators Being Killed by #COVID19 #Pandemic. Small businesses employ over 110 million workers & are the nation’s biggest non-farm employer. Their revival is key to getting jobs on track for domestic demand and #GDP growth. #Modi. #BJP https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-09/india-s-biggest-job-creators-are-being-killed-by-the-pandemic
ReplyDeleteSmall businesses may be the bedrock of the Indian economy, helping expand its industrial base and creating jobs by the millions, but the pandemic has shown it’s better to be bigger, according to research by Societe Generale.
The so-called micro-, small-, and medium-enterprises haven’t benefited much from the government’s stimulus steps such as liquidity and loan moratorium, forcing them to let go a large swathe of their employees, Kunal Kundu, an economist with Societe Generale GSC Pvt. in Bengaluru, wrote in the report. While the bigger companies sailed through with a minor blip, he said.
Read: $277 Billion Package May Not Give Immediate Boost to India
Given that small enterprises account for more than 110 million workers and are the nation’s biggest non-farm employer, Kundu said their revival is key to getting jobs on track, and, in turn, domestic demand.
Here’s how Kundu sees small companies faring poorly compared to larger ones:
MSMEs, which have a much higher staff cost-to-sales ratio, saw a 10.5 percentage point drop in the ratio between the second and fourth quarters of 2020, while the drop for the larger companies was only around 5 percentage point
Despite large-scale layoffs, MSME’s margins continued to suffer not just because of high and rising input costs, but also because of a sharp increase in their financing cost
Small businesses also face a double whammy on the tax front. Currently, these businesses are liable to pay consumption tax as soon as they raise an invoice, irrespective of whether or not the invoices have been settled. Failure to pay goods and services tax, in turn, leads to an additional burden in the form of penalties
#Indian Rupee Slides Toward Year’s Low as #India’s Trade Deficit Widens. India’s widening trade deficit & elevated commodity prices are bearing down on the #currency , reinforcing a recent downward trend pushing it toward a new low for the year.- Bloomberg
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-11/rupee-slides-toward-year-s-low-as-india-s-trade-deficit-widens
https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1414378178777272322?s=20
After months of wild volatility in the rupee, India’s widening trade deficit and elevated commodity prices are bearing down on the currency, reinforcing a recent downward bias and pushing it toward a new low for the year.
That’s the view of traders who’ve seen the rupee whipsaw from being Asia’s best performer in the first quarter to its worst in April when another wave of Covid-19 infections took hold.
This volatility and the prospect of tapering by the Federal Reserve have also reduced the attractiveness of India’s currency for carry trades, adding to its headwinds.
“We expect oil and broader commodity complex prices to remain elevated in the short term, which will weigh on India’s trade balance,” said Standard Chartered Plc’s Parul Mittal Sinha. “We maintain a bearish view on the rupee,” said Sinha, who heads the bank’s India financial markets and macro trading for South Asia.
Standard Chartered and RBL Bank Ltd. forecast the currency to depreciate to 76 per dollar by year-end, while their peers at Deutsche Bank AG have a slightly less pessimistic projection of 75.
The rupee closed at 74.6350 on Friday while Brent crude, the benchmark for India’s oil imports, was around $76 per barrel, up more than 45% since the start of the year.
Amid the devastating human toll that the coronavirus is taking in India, the rate of increase in new infections is slowing, which is improving the prospects for reopening the economy. But as the Covid curve flattens and consumers and businesses become more active, demand for imports is also set to increase, weighing on the currency.
Updated trade data due Thursday are expected to confirm the deficit widened to $9.4 billion in June, from $6.3 billion in May. Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. estimates that billion dollar deficits will continue and average in the “double digits” as the economy reopens.
Technical indicators also point to further depreciation of the currency given dollar-rupee’s moving average convergence-divergence gauge, a measure of momentum, remains above zero in bullish territory. The pair has room to run before reaching resistance at April’s peak of 75.3362.
Yet even RBL Bank’s domestic markets head Anand Bagri, who expects the rupee to weaken, sees pockets of support for the currency, including inflows for equity offerings.
Notable among these is a $1.3 billion initial share salesfrom Zomato Ltd., and Paytm’s bid for shareholder approval of a $2.2 billion stock sale that would set in motion the process for the country’s largest ever debut.
The Reserve Bank of India also has $600 billion of currency reserves to draw on to curb any sharp fall in the rupee.
‘”We expect the RBI to remain proactive with its FX intervention strategy to ensure limited volatility in the rupee and to prevent excessive rupee depreciation from feeding into inflation,” said Kaushik Das, chief India economist at Deutsche Bank.
Sashi Tharoor: #India besieged by #Covid19, rising #poverty, falling #GDP growth & tensions with #China & #Pakistan. #Modi's embrace of the #Quad with the #US, #Japan and #Australia should be seen in this light: it is shield, more than sword https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3140393/coronavirus-poverty-pakistan-india-under-siege-not-ready-war?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=share_widget&utm_campaign=3140393 via @scmpnews
ReplyDeleteThe Hindu nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government in India led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi marked the seventh anniversary of its ascent to power a little over a month ago without any of its customary fanfare. The subdued air around the government’s conduct reveals a country in many ways under siege.
First of all, the deadly coronavirus has besieged India, with the authorities’ response to a devastating second wave bordering between the inept and the irresponsible. So far, close to 400,000 people have lost their lives, though unofficial estimates place the toll much higher. More than 30 million people have been infected; many have had to struggle for basic supplies of medicines and oxygen in the last three months, as hospitals overflowed and the health-care system buckled under the pressure. Only 4 per cent of Indians are fully vaccinated, the government having failed to order sufficient doses even while it was boasting that it had done the world a favour by preventing a major calamity.
Next, the economy is under siege. The GDP growth rate has cratered, thanks in part (but not only) to the draconian nationwide lockdown imposed in March 2020 and fitfully renewed since. Some 75 million people were pushed below the poverty line in 2020 and 97 per cent of Indians reported becoming poorer during the last year. Unemployment figures are at the highest levels ever recorded. Tens of thousands of micro, small and medium enterprises (especially those employing fewer than twenty people) have been forced to close. India’s middle class is estimated to have shrunk by 32 million in the last year. It is clear that both lives and livelihoods have been in jeopardy since the Modi government’s re-election in May 2019.
Top #Indian newspaper raided by #tax authorities after months of critical coverage.Under #Modi, several critical media outlets have found themselves in tax investigators’ crosshairs, raising fears about the health of the independent press in #India. #BJP https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/india-modi-press-raid/2021/07/22/facbc01a-eabd-11eb-84a2-d93bc0b50294_story.html?tid=ss_tw
ReplyDelete“The raid is the outcome of our aggressive reporting, especially during the second wave of the pandemic in April,” Gaur said by telephone. “Unlike some other media, we reported how people were dying for lack of oxygen and hospital beds.”
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Indian tax authorities on Thursday raided one of the country's most prominent newspapers in what journalists and the political opposition denounced as retaliation for the outlet's hard-nosed coverage of the government's pandemic response.
The Dainik Bhaskar Group, whose Hindi-language broadsheet boasts a combined circulation of more than 4 million, was raided simultaneously in at least four locations, including at its headquarters in Madhya Pradesh state.
Surabhi Ahluwalia, a spokeswoman for the tax authority, said searches were underway at multiple locations across the country linked to the group, but she declined to share details about the case. She said the department usually conducts searches in matters of tax evasion.
But the justification of tax evasion was panned by government critics, who pointed out that Dainik Bhaskar has been persistently needling India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with its coverage, including as recently as this week.
India used spyware to hack journalists and others
The Press Club of India said in a statement that it “deplores such acts of intimidation by the government through enforcement agencies to deter the independent media.”
Under the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who rose to power in 2014, several critical media outlets have found themselves in tax investigators’ crosshairs, raising fears about the health of the independent press in the world’s largest democracy. Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group for journalists, recently placed India at 142nd place in its press freedom rankings, roughly on par with Myanmar and Mexico.
Om Gaur, Dainik Bhaskar’s national editor, said his staff’s mobile devices were seized during the raids as a “tactic to harass journalists.”
“The raid is the outcome of our aggressive reporting, especially during the second wave of the pandemic in April,” Gaur said by telephone. “Unlike some other media, we reported how people were dying for lack of oxygen and hospital beds.”
The tax investigation “is not going to change anything for us,” he added. “We will keep doing good journalism.”
As covid-19 roiled India this spring, Dainik Bhaskar splashed photos of funeral pyres on its front pages, reported on corpses floating in the Ganges River and repeatedly challenged the government’s narrative about the disaster and its official death statistics. Gaur, the editor, contributed an op-ed in the New York Times that made waves in his home country.
The paper has sometimes taken a less-than-orthodox approach to holding government accountable: As citizens in the state of Gujarat struggled to procure covid-19 medication in April, the paper published the phone number of the BJP’s state president in a massive front-page headline.
#Indian man fined 100,000 Indian rupees ($1,322) for wanting #Modi’s face cut from #vaccine drive. #India’s PM Modi is the focus of a huge #advertising blitz touting his government’s triumphs in fighting #COVID despite nearly 500,000 deaths. #pandemic https://aje.io/swz2bt
ReplyDeleteAn Indian man who went to court to complain about Prime Minister Narendra Modi promoting himself as the face of the nation’s COVID-19 vaccination drive has walked away with a fine for “wasting” the judge’s time.
India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister has been the focus of an enormous advertising blitz touting his government’s triumphs in fighting the pandemic despite nearly 500,000 Indians dying of COVID-19, according to official data. Health experts fear the actual toll could be much higher.
Modi’s visage has been plastered on billboards and even on the side of passenger planes alongside a triumphant message celebrating India’s recent milestone of one billion administered vaccination doses.
The campaign is at odds with the fierce criticism levelled at Modi’s government since the pandemic began, with political opponents dryly suggesting his face should also be printed on the death certificates of COVID-19 victims.
Peter Myaliparampil of southern Kerala state had objected to Modi’s face being printed on his vaccine certificate with a message exhorting the public to fight the coronavirus.
He told a court that India’s inoculation rollout risked becoming “a media campaign” for Modi’s benefit.
In his petition, Myaliparampil said he had paid for his own vaccine and the image of Modi on his certificate “served no utility or relevance”.
But the Kerala High Court threw out the case, saying it appeared to be politically motivated and fined him 100,000 Indian rupees ($1,322) for wasting its time.
“If the petitioner … is ashamed to see the picture of his prime minister, he can avert his eyes to the bottom side of the vaccine certificate,” the court’s judgement said.
Myaliparampil’s lawyer told the AFP news agency they would appeal against the decision.
India has recorded more than 477,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths, more than any other country except the United States and Brazil.
The government has justified using Modi as the face of the media campaign, with the junior health minister telling parliament in August that it created awareness about coronavirus prevention.
#India's staggering COVID-19 death toll could be 6 million, by far the highest #COVID19 death toll in the world -- greater than the #US at more than 811,000. #Modi #BJP #pandemic #Delta #OmicronVariant - ABC News - https://abcn.ws/30UZSLO via @ABC
ReplyDeleteNew research suggests that India’s COVID-19 death toll during its first and second waves might have been significantly undercounted, with the actual number potentially 12 times higher than the official stats -- over 6 million people.
That would be by far the highest COVID death toll in the world -- greater than the U.S. at more than 811,000.
India was devastated by a crushing wave of the delta variant in April and May, with supply shortages, makeshift clinics and images of funeral pyres burning nonstop.
There was a sense at the time that the number of deaths was an undercount and a study in July indicated that deaths could be 10 times the official toll, although that research had limitations.
MORE: EXPLAINER: Why India's pandemic data is vastly undercounted
The new study, by researchers in the U.S. and India from the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, a public health research institute in Washington, D.C., indicates that the “reported COVID-19 deaths greatly underestimated pandemic-associated mortality” and was particularly acute among older and poorer people.
According to government statistics, India logged 478,007 COVID-19 deaths from the beginning of the pandemic, marked at Jan. 3, 2020 to Dec. 21, 2021, and nearly 35 million cases during that time.
The study -- which is focused on the Chennai District on the country's southeast coast -- indicates the number is likely much higher, finding that that the death rate there was 5.2 per 1,000, "a 41% increase over typical mortality levels in the city.”
The study uses data on "all-cause mortality" within the district, i.e. the death rate from all causes of death for the population in the given time period are considered.
“On the nationwide figures, the 5.2 deaths per 1000 resident would indicate over 6 million deaths nationwide if the results could be extrapolated to the entire country,” Professor Ramanan Laxminarayan, an economist and epidemiologist and the study's lead author, told ABC News. He is the founder of the University of Washington's Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in DC, which contributed to the project.
Deaths were substantially higher in older age groups.
Greater increases in mortality were observed in communities with lower socioeconomic status during the second wave of infections from March 1-June 30, 2021, but not during the first.
Laxminarayan said that there were limitations to the study -- Chennai, as an urban area, might have been more affected than many parts of the country which were rural.
“But by the same token, Chennai has some of the best public health and healthcare facilities in the country and so the mortality rates in Chennai were likely lower than in other parts of the country,” he added.
The study notes that the true burden of disease is still “uncertain” due to restrictions in disease surveillance and a lack of official death records.
#India's staggering COVID-19 death toll could be 6 million, by far the highest #COVID19 death toll in the world -- greater than the #US at more than 811,000. #Modi #BJP #pandemic #Delta #OmicronVariant - ABC News - https://abcn.ws/30UZSLO via @ABC
ReplyDeleteEven though omicron is quickly becoming the more dominant form of Covid in the U.S. and elsewhere, quick action has bought time for scientists to decode the extent of its transmissibility and severity. South Africa identified and broadcast details of the new variant just weeks after seeing a spike in cases in one province.
By contrast, for much of 2020, India’s efforts tracking the virus were sparse, meaning the exact origin of delta still remains murky. To date, the country has only sequenced and shared 0.3% of its total official infections to the GISAID database.
India has been held back by the fact that only a handful of government laboratories and states were making consistent efforts in the first year of the pandemic to map the virus, even as millions were being infected in the country’s first wave, according to people familiar with the matter. Bhramar Mukherjee, an epidemiologist and biostatistics chair at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health, said India’s sequencing efforts were hurt by “bureaucracy, politics and a sense of exceptionalism that we have conquered Covid and there is no need to worry about variants.”
“The need to share data and samples is so key,” she said. “When South Africa started collaborating and sharing with the rest of the world, progress also increased like a process of contagion: exponentially. India is always protective of its own data.”
Inside India’s scientific agencies a lack of institutional dynamism, along with a culture of subservience to Modi’s government — highly sensitive to commentary on its handling of the virus — had taken hold, said one former official. That meant critical questions weren’t being aired by experts out of fear they’d derail their careers, the person said. In many cases, India’s health ministry simply wasn’t listening to or making decisions based on advice coming from those expert bodies, according to this official.
Attempts to ramp up sequencing in India were also critically curtailed by an inadvertent ban in May 2020 on the import of reagents, the chemical needed to fuel sequencer machines. The `Make in India’ campaign, Modi’s drive to ensure the country is less reliant on places like China, meant publicly-financed labs weren’t able to import items worth less than 2 billion rupees ($26.5 million) for months. India mostly uses sequencers manufactured by San Diego-based Illumina Inc. and the U.K.’s Oxford Nanopore Technologies Plc, which run on patented reagents that can’t be substituted locally.
Scientists in India and abroad now provide varying dates for when delta began circulating there. Samples retrospectively added to GISAID show at least one delta-linked lineage in India as far back as September last year, while the World Health Organization places its first discovery there in October.
Current and former Indian government scientists say there are often errors when manually uploading information to the database and those datelines are likely to be wrong. December 2020 is when delta was initially sequenced in India, they say. Certainly, the first person to decode the mutations wouldn’t have known its full enormity at the time since not all changes in a virus are significant. Only when you begin to see spiraling outbreaks marked by similar characteristics do you realize that a variant of concern is at play, they said. But Amravati offered the clues needed to make that connection as early as January this year.
In last 5 years under #Modi, income of poorest 20% #Indians fell 53%, the 2nd lowest quintile (lower middle class) saw 32% decline in their household income. Upper middle (20%) & richest (20%) saw their household income rise by 7% and 39% respectively #BJP https://indianexpress.com/article/india/income-of-poorest-fifth-plunged-53-in-5-yrs-those-at-top-surged-7738426/
ReplyDelete------
While the pandemic brought economic activity to a standstill for at least two quarters in 2020-21 and resulted in a 7.3% contraction in GDP in 2020-21, the survey shows that the pandemic hit the urban poor most and eroded their household income.
Splitting the population across five categories based on income, the survey shows that while the poorest 20% (first quintile) witnessed the biggest erosion of 53%, the second lowest quintile (lower middle category), too, witnessed a decline in their household income of 32% in the same period. While the quantum of erosion reduced to 9% for those in the middle income category, the top two quintiles — upper middle (20%) and richest (20%)— saw their household income rise by 7% and 39% respectively.
The survey shows that the richest 20% of households have, on average, added more income per household and more pooled income as a group in the past five years than in any five-year period earlier since liberalisation. Exactly the opposite has happened for the poorest 20% of households — on average, they have never actually seen a decrease in household income since 1995. Yet, in 2021, in a huge knockout punch caused by Covid, they earned half as much as they did in 2016.
How disruptive this distress has been for those at the bottom of the pyramid is reinforced by the fact that in the previous 11-year period between 2005 and 2016, while the household income of the richest 20% grew by 34%, the poorest 20% saw their household income surge by 183% at an average annual growth rate of 9.9%.
Coming in the run-up to the Budget, the task for the Government is cut out.
“As the Finance Minister is finalising her budget proposals for 2022-23 to give shape to the roadmap for economic revival of the country,” said Rajesh Shukla, MD and CEO, PRICE, “we need a K-shaped policy too that addresses the two ends of the spectrum and a lot more thinking on how to build the bridge between the two.”
#India #Covid-19: 'My father did not have to die'. The oxygen cylinder placed under hard vinyl bench on which he lay did not work. His ambulance was slowed by random police checkpoints, his condition worsened before he reached hospital #Modi #BJP @BDUTT https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-61244109
ReplyDeleteIn April 2021, when the news first came that my father had Covid, I was at a crematorium in Mumbai, fighting back tears, as an elderly man in a wheelchair waved goodbye to his wife.
Covid was already my whole life. I travelled more than 30,000km (18,641 miles) by road across India, through the first wave and then again thousands of kilometres by both air and road through the more lethal second spell.
I'd been the chronicler of death and despair; but now the news had come home.
I am forever haunted by my decision to take my dad to hospital in a private ambulance.
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Last summer hundreds of thousands of people died when an unprepared India was hit by a catastrophic second wave of Covid-19 and its health care system buckled. Journalist Barkha Dutt, who was chronicling the pandemic, lost her father to the virus in April 2021. Here she writes on her loss, and other daughters who suffered the same fate.
It's been a year since I have been able to hear music; a year since the death of my father to Covid at the peak of India's insatiable second wave.
So, a few days ago, the faint strains of a familiar tune felt like a jolt to the system.
Guantanamera Guajira Guantanamera…
My hand trembled as I heard the chords of the Cuban folk song that has been variously sung to invoke romance, patriotism, protest and change.
Inside I was shaking.
Memory can be a beast.
For my sister and I, this was Papa's Song that marked the milestones of our lives, played out on scratchy cassettes when we were kids, remastered for an eight-track system in our teens, graduating to CDs when we went to college and finally heard on loop at his desktop. Here, he was surrounded by grandchildren, dogs, meccano sets, and odd looking wires - bit parts of kettles, speakers, coffee makers - machines he was repairing for friends, sometimes opened up for the sheer joy of tinkering with them.
SP Dutt - 'Speedy' to friends and family - was one of the hundreds of thousands of Indians taken by a virus that pummelled our health system into submission. In the wasteland of a nation's grief, April was indeed the cruellest month as oxygen ran out, hospitals shut their gates to patients who died on the streets, vaccines were delayed and elections were mockingly on schedule.
We could only turn to each other, daughters desperate to save fathers, as institutions collapsed.
In Mumbai, Samridhi Saxena, reached out in the hope that I could help her father with an oxygen cylinder. He was struggling with a rare neurodegenerative disease.
From Patna, Manisha called to say her 53-year-old father may die because the hospital where he was admitted no longer had oxygen.
In Bangalore, 21-year-old Bharini asked me: "How strong am I expected to be?" She lost her biological parents in an accident, now her adoptive mother had died from Covid.
Journalist Stutee Ghosh and I mirrored each other's gnawing guilt - that somehow we were letting down our fathers; but also the guilt of knowing that even in our worst moment, we were better off than hundreds of thousands of other Indians, just because that our dads were in hospital and not stranded on the road.
Her father, like mine, didn't make it. And over the weeks, her grief mutated into rage at "the indignity in death for so many who are dying and not even being counted by the government".
We were bereft. As daughters. And as citizens.
Before my father died, we always valorised our mother, Prabha Dutt, who we lost when I was 13 years old to a brain haemorrhage. As India's first woman war correspondent, who died at 40, she was the stuff of legend.
90% of Women in India Are Shut Out of the Workforce
ReplyDeleteA small fraction of women in India had formal employment before the pandemic. Covid made it so much worse.
By Ronojoy Mazumdar and Archana Chaudhary
June 1, 2022, 5:01 PM PDT
https://www.tbsnews.net/bloomberg-special/90-women-india-are-shut-out-workforce-431950
For years, Sanchuri Bhuniya fought her parents' pleas to settle down. She wanted to travel and earn money — not become a housewife.
So in 2019, Bhuniya snuck out of her isolated village in eastern India. She took a train hundreds of miles south to the city of Bengaluru and found work in a garment factory earning $120 a month. The job liberated her. "I ran away," she said. "That's the only way I was able to go."
That life of financial freedom ended abruptly with the arrival of Covid-19. In 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared a nationwide lockdown to curb infections, shutting almost all businesses. Within a few weeks, more than 100 million Indians lost their jobs, including Bhuniya, who was forced to return to her village and never found another stable employer.
As the world climbs out of the pandemic, economists warn of a troubling data point: Failing to restore jobs for women — who have been less likely than men to return to the workforce — could shave trillions of dollars off global economic growth. The forecast is particularly bleak in developing countries like India, where female labor force participation fell so steeply that it's now in the same league as war-torn Yemen.
This week's episode of The Pay Check podcast explores how the coronavirus accelerated an already worrying trend in the world's second-most populous country. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of working women in India dropped from 26% to 19%, according to data compiled by the World Bank. As infections surged, a bad situation turned dire: Economists in Mumbai estimate that female employment plummeted to 9% by 2022.
This is disastrous news for India's economy, which had started slowing before the pandemic. Modi has prioritized job creation, pressing the country to strive for amrit kaal, a golden era of growth. But his administration has made little progress in improving prospects for working women. That's especially true in rural areas, where more than two-thirds of India's 1.3 billion people live, conservative mores reign and jobs have been evaporating for years. Despite the nation's rapid economic expansion, women have struggled to make the transition to working in urban centers.
Closing the employment gap between men and women — a whopping 58 percentage points — could expand India's GDP by close to a third by 2050. That equates to nearly $6 trillion in constant US dollar terms, according to a recent analysis from Bloomberg Economics. Doing nothing threatens to derail the country on its quest to become a competitive producer for global markets. Though women in India represent 48% of the population, they contribute only around 17% of GDP compared to 40% in China.
India is an extreme illustration of a global phenomenon. Across the world, women were more likely than men to lose jobs during the pandemic, and their recovery has been slower. Policy changes that address gender disparities and boost the number of working women — improved access to education, child care, or flexible work arrangements, for example — would help add about $20 trillion to global GDP by 2050, according to Bloomberg Economics.
For workers like Bhuniya, 23, the pandemic had heavy consequences. After losing her job, she struggled to afford food in Bengaluru and eventually returned to her remote village, Patrapali, in the state of Odisha. Bhuniya doesn't think she'll have another opportunity to leave. She no longer earns a steady income, but her family worries about her safety as a single woman living in a distant city.
https://www.tbsnews.net/bloomberg-special/90-women-india-are-shut-out-workforce-431950
ReplyDelete"If I run away again, my mother will curse me," said Bhuniya. "Now, there's nothing left. My account is empty and there's little work in the village."
The story echoes across India. During the pandemic, Rosa Abraham, an economics professor at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, tracked more than 20,000 people as they navigated the labor market. She found that after the first lockdown, women were several times more likely to lose their jobs than men and far less likely to recover work after restrictions lifted.
Pandemic Impact on Employment
How India's Covid lockdowns affected employment for men and women
Increased domestic duties, lack of childcare options after school shutdowns, and a surge in marriages — which often confine women's autonomy in India — help explain the difference in outcome.
"When men are faced with this kind of a huge economic shock, then they have a fallback option," Abraham said. "They can navigate to different kinds of work. But for women, there is no such fallback option. They can't negotiate the labor market as effectively as men do."
Dreams of freedom or a well-paid office job were replaced with what she called "distress-led employment," essentially unpaid work on a family farm or taking care of the home. Prior to the pandemic, Indian women already performed about 10 times more care work than men, around three times the global average.
"It is the unfortunate situation that the decision to work is often not in the hands of the woman herself," Abraham said.
The decline in workforce participation is partly about culture. As Indians became wealthier, families that could afford to keep women at home did so, thinking it conferred social status. On the other extreme, those at the lowest rungs of society are still seen as potential earners. But they tend to work menial or unpaid jobs far from the formal economy. In the official statistics, their labor is not counted.
In many villages, patriarchal values remain ironclad, and a stigma against girls persists. Though illegal, sex-selective abortions are still common. Akhina Hansraj, senior program manager at Akshara Centre, a Mumbai-based organization that advocates for gender equity, said Indian men often think "it's not very manly if their wife contributes to the family income."
"They want to create this dependency," Hansraj said. "People believe if women get educated, they might work and become financially independent and then they may not obey and respect the family."
Marriage is a sticking point in India, where most weddings are still arranged. After the first lockdown, in 2020, the country's leading matrimony websites reported a spike in new registrations. In some states, marriages among children and young adults — many of them illegal under Indian law — jumped by 80%, according to government data.
Madhu Sharma, a Hindi teacher at the Pardada Pardadi Educational Society, a girls' school in the northern town of Anupshahr, said she might intervene in three child marriages a year. During the pandemic, when the campus closed, the number increased three to four times.
"Before Covid, children were always in touch with their teachers and also with me," she said. "After Covid, when the children had to stay at home, keeping in contact with them became a big challenge."
Financial considerations often tipped the scales in favor of marriage. Social distancing and warnings against large gatherings meant parents could hold small, less-expensive ceremonies at home, rather than the multi-day celebrations that are common even in the poorest pockets of society. During the direst stretches of the pandemic, some families married off daughters because they couldn't afford to feed another mouth.
https://www.tbsnews.net/bloomberg-special/90-women-india-are-shut-out-workforce-431950
ReplyDeleteFor Sharma's students, getting married before finishing school can change the trajectory of their lives. In India, when a woman marries, she typically moves in with her husband and in-laws. That can make it difficult to leave secluded villages where policing of choices is common and employment opportunities are scarce.
"We try to educate our students," Sharma said. "We explain to them that if they study, they will be in a good spot. If they don't, we describe what their position will be like. 'The rest is up to you,' we tell them. You live life the way you want to create it."
In 2015, Modi started a campaign called "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao," which roughly means "Save Our Daughters, Teach Our Daughters." It's an initiative aimed at keeping girls in school and reducing sex-selective abortion. The government has also tried to eradicate child marriage. Last year, Modi's administration passed a proposal to raise the legal marriage age for women from 18 to 21, which is what it is for men.
But in many villages, national laws are distant abstractions. Local customs are still set and enforced by local panchayats, essentially a group of elders, almost all men. And while Modi's campaign to educate India's daughters received lots of publicity, recent government audits found that much of the initiative's funds remained unspent.
Even in urban metropolises, where literacy rates are far higher and jobs are more abundant, the pressure on women is overwhelming.
Anjali Gupta, who lives in Mumbai, said she was barely hanging on. First, the coronavirus lockdowns devastated her family's small grocery store, forcing them to exhaust their savings to survive. Then her parents started pushing Gupta and her three sisters to get married, fearing that they would be left destitute without husbands.
Gupta tried to reason with them. She had already spent about $1,300 studying for a master's degree in pharmaceuticals and nutrition. She was training with a homeopathic doctor. She wanted a career. "I explained that my situation is different, my generation is different," Gupta said.
But after an uncle died from the coronavirus, Gupta's father pleaded with her to drop out of school, a prospect that induced migraines and endless arguments. Her parents started bringing prospective grooms home. Gupta worries the inertia will eventually overpower her.
"It shouldn't be this way," she said. "I want to do and learn more. I'm only 22."
India's Economic Situation 'Bleak'; We Know the Issue but Not the Solution: Pronab Sen
ReplyDeleteIn an interview with Karan Thapar, the country's former chief statistician said that India will miss the RBI's target of 7.2% growth for this financial year and that it'll come around 6-6.5%. (real growth going forward will be around 4%)
Pranab Sen: Demonetization and COVID lockdown dried up the informal credit and killed a large percentage of small and medium enterprises.
https://thewire.in/video/watch-indias-economic-situation-bleak-we-know-the-issue-but-not-the-solution-pronab-sen
https://youtu.be/p3avEIThSN8
In an interview where he paints a bleak and disturbing picture of the state of the economy, India’s former chief statistician professor Pronab Sen has said that we can identify the problems that are retarding growth but we don’t know how to tackle them.
Worse, professor Sen says he is not sure if the government has diagnosed the problems because it has not spoken about them and its silence can be variously interpreted. Consequently, he says that India will miss the RBI’s target of 7.2% growth for this financial year and that it will growth will only come in somewhere around 6-6.5%.
However, he points out, in real terms growth will actually be just 4% which, he adds, is at least 2.5% below the growth India needs to create jobs for its population. This means, professor Sen points out, we can boast of being the fastest growing economy but it’s equally true that we are considerably falling short of the rate of growth we need (6.57%) to create sufficient jobs for our people which, in turn, will boost consumption and spending and create incentives for investment.
In these circumstances, professor Sen said that first quarter growth of FY23 at 13.5% is clearly disappointing.
In a 42-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, professor Sen, who is currently the country director of the International Growth Centre, identified two critical areas where the Indian economy faces serious problems about which we are not sure what we should do.
The first is the MSME sector which, he added, has undoubtedly shrunk in size over the last two years. The problem is not a question of encouraging and helping existing MSMEs so much as creating the environment for new MSMEs to emerge. The specific problem is that the informal credit line on which they depend has dried up and we don’t know how to revive that credit line. The government does not have a clear way of doing so.
And, the problem afflicting MSMEs, professor Sen says, is the reason why manufacturing has only grown year-on-year by 4.8% and why joblessness and unemployment are an increasing concern. Most jobs are created by MSMEs or the wider unorganised sector and that seems to have stopped or, at least, is not happening in sufficient measure.
The second problem professor Sen identified is the critical services sector of trade, hotel, transport, communication and broadcasting services, which represent 30.5% of employment but is still 15.5% below pre-pandemic levels. Once again, he said we don’t know what we need to do to boost this sector back to pre-pandemic levels. He pointed out that many MSMEs work in this sector and its future is, therefore, directly linked to MSMEs.
Professor Sen also pointed out that the global situation will not be of much help to India. Interest rates are likely to remain high and exports, which have been a support to the economy until recently, will face problems in markets like Europe and America and, therefore, fail to provide the boost to growth they have previously given. However, he believes oil prices could come down.
He believes India is clearly locked into a K-shaped recovery and the arms of the K are moving further and further apart.
Whilst scoffing at commentators and newspapers that have called for broad-based reforms, without identifying what they would be, professor Sen said that the key reform needed would be credit lines that would service MSMEs and provide funds for new MSMEs to start up.
PM Modi: The Joke Indians are Not Allowed to Crack
ReplyDelete4 April 2022, by THOMAS Rosamma
https://www.ritimo.org/PM-Modi-The-Joke-Indians-are-Not-Allowed-to-Crack
Parul Khakhar, a poet from Gujarat, posted a poem on Facebook in May, expressing her anguish at the sight of bodies flowing down the Ganges at the height of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. ‘Shav vahini Ganga’ – Ganges the Carrier of Corpses – was read widely, translated into several languages and shared on social media. The state government’s literary mouthpiece came down heavily on the poet, claiming it was “misuse of a poem for anarchy”.
Ganges, the Carrier of Corpses
Translated by Salil Tripathi
Don’t worry, be happy, in one voice speak the corpses
O King, in your Ram-Rajya, we see bodies flow in the Ganges
O King, the woods are ashes,
No spots remain at crematoria,
O King, there are no carers,
Nor any pall-bearers,
No mourners left
And we are bereft
With our wordless dirges of dysphoria
Libitina enters every home where she dances and then prances,
O King, in your Ram-Rajya, our bodies flow in the Ganges
O King, the melting chimney quivers, the virus has us shaken
O King, our bangles shatter, our heaving chest lies broken
The city burns as he fiddles, Billa-Ranga thrust their lances,
O King, in your Ram-Rajya, I see bodies flow in the Ganges
O King, your attire sparkles as you shine and glow and blaze
O King, this entire city has at last seen your real face
Show your guts, no ifs and buts,
Come out and shout and say it loud,
“The naked King is lame and weak”
Show me you are no longer meek,
Flames rise high and reach the sky, the furious city rages;
O King, in your Ram-Rajya, do you see bodies flow in the Ganges?
https://www.ritimo.org/PM-Modi-The-Joke-Indians-are-Not-Allowed-to-Crack
'India needs educated PM': Arvind Kejriwal targets Narendra Modi in Assam | Deccan Herald
ReplyDeletehttps://www.deccanherald.com/national/national-politics/india-needs-educated-pm-arvind-kejriwal-targets-narendra-modi-in-assam-1205990.html
Continuing his criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his educational qualifications, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday said an educated PM would not have gone for "dangerous" decisions like the demonetisation and three "anti-farmer" laws.
"I listened to Narendra Modi's speech where he said he went to a village school only and could not do further studies. But I want to ask you today, shouldn't the Prime Minister of a great nation like India be educated?" Kejriwal asked the crowd during his maiden rally in Assam capital Guwahati on Sunday afternoon. The rally was organised by the Assam unit of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as part of its organisational expansion programme in the state, where BJP has been in power since 2016.
"India is a poor nation and someone not going to school due to poverty is not a crime. But our Prime Minister should be educated. The Prime Minister did demonetisation which took our economy 10 years backward. Someone fooled our PM and told him to ban the notes to end corruption. Did demonetisation end corruption? Someone told our PM that demonetisation will end terrorism. Did demonetisation end terrorism?" Kejriwal asked.
"It's the 21st Century and youths of the 21st Century are aspirational. They believe in science and technology. They want employment and prosperity of India and only an educated PM can bring that prosperity. A less educated or illiterate person can not bring prosperity. A private company asks for an MBA, MA and BA degree for a manager's job. But shouldn't there be educational qualifications for the country's topmost manager as the Prime Minister?" he asked.
Punjab CM Bhagwant Singh Mann addressed the rally before Kejriwal in which he also slammed BJP.
Both Kejriwal and Mann slammed their Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma saying the latter was only doing "dirty politics" and failed to provide jobs, hold examinations in a fair manner and could not improve amenities such as schools, hospitals and other infrastructure. "Today he is threatening me on TV to put me behind bars. Am I a terrorism, why will you catch me?" Kejriwal asked while referring to Sarma's warning on Friday about filing defamation cases in case the former made corruption allegations. "Today I want to invite him to come to my home for tea when he visits Delhi next. I will take him around in my car and the finest schools and hospitals we have provided to the people of Delhi," he said. Both Mann and Kejriwal asked why Sarma's wife was running a private school in Guwahati. "If a CM's wife runs a private school, will the government improve the government schools?" he asked. Both promised that AAP will provide Delhi and Punjab-like facilities if people voted them to power in the Assembly elections in 2026.
In the absence of real data, India's stats are all being manufactured by BJP to win elections.
ReplyDeletePostponing India’s census is terrible for the country
But it may suit Narendra Modi just fine
https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/01/05/postponing-indias-census-is-terrible-for-the-country
Narendra Modi often overstates his achievements. For example, the Hindu-nationalist prime minister’s claim that all Indian villages have been electrified on his watch glosses over the definition: only public buildings and 10% of households need a connection for the village to count as such. And three years after Mr Modi declared India “open-defecation free”, millions of villagers are still purging al fresco. An absence of up-to-date census information makes it harder to check such inflated claims. It is also a disaster for the vast array of policymaking reliant on solid population and development data.
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Three years ago India’s government was scheduled to pose its citizens a long list of basic but important questions. How many people live in your house? What is it made of? Do you have a toilet? A car? An internet connection? The answers would refresh data from the country’s previous census in 2011, which, given India’s rapid development, were wildly out of date. Because of India’s covid-19 lockdown, however, the questions were never asked.
Almost three years later, and though India has officially left the pandemic behind, there has been no attempt to reschedule the decennial census. It may not happen until after parliamentary elections in 2024, or at all. Opposition politicians and development experts smell a rat.
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For a while policymakers can tide themselves over with estimates, but eventually these need to be corrected with accurate numbers. “Right now we’re relying on data from the 2011 census, but we know our results will be off by a lot because things have changed so much since then,” says Pronab Sen, a former chairman of the National Statistical Commission who works on the household-consumption survey. And bad data lead to bad policy. A study in 2020 estimated that some 100m people may have missed out on food aid to which they were entitled because the distribution system uses decade-old numbers.
Similarly, it is important to know how many children live in an area before building schools and hiring teachers. The educational misfiring caused by the absence of such knowledge is particularly acute in fast-growing cities such as Delhi or Bangalore, says Narayanan Unni, who is advising the government on the census. “We basically don’t know how many people live in these places now, so proper planning for public services is really hard.”
The home ministry, which is in charge of the census, continues to blame its postponement on the pandemic, most recently in response to a parliamentary question on December 13th. It said the delay would continue “until further orders”, giving no time-frame for a resumption of data-gathering. Many statisticians and social scientists are mystified by this explanation: it is over a year since India resumed holding elections and other big political events.
India’s #Modi's Wild Vanity Project Already Has Eight Dead #Cheetahs. #Indian prime minister’s PR attempt to reintroduce big cats to #India was doomed from the start, scientists and conservationists say. #BJP #Hindutva https://www.thedailybeast.com/indias-wild-vanity-project-already-has-already-killed-eight-cheetahs-from-south-africa
ReplyDeleteTwenty cheetahs were shipped to India from Southern Africa in a historic intercontinental translocation designed to restore the big cats to the country for the first time in 70 years.
The first delivery was timed to coincide with the Indian prime minister’s birthday last year. Amid huge fanfare leading up to the big day, enormous billboards across major cities in the country advertised this achievement of Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Cheetahs—the agile big cats known for their remarkable speed and striking appearance—were declared extinct in India in 1952. Now Modi—the most powerful Indian leader in decades—seemed to be saying he could turn back time and bring these beautiful creatures home to a resurgent India.
The results, so far, of this grandiose plan have been tragic.
The first eight cheetahs arrived from Namibia last September, and another 12 cheetahs from South Africa were introduced to the Kuno National Park—located in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh—in February this year.
Hopes across the country were sky high, but even before they arrived, scientists and conservationists were raising major concerns about this unprecedented plan.
Kuno National Park emerged as the location for the reintroduction of cheetahs, beating out 10 surveyed sites in five central Indian states, according to the government’s action plan. Studies by conservation researchers, however, disagreed.
The action plan, devised by the Wildlife Institute of India, says that this decision was influenced by Kuno National Park’s “suitable habitat and abundant prey base.” Scientists, again, disagree.
While the ambitious plan to reintroduce cheetahs was being put into action, there were murmurs of concern among India’s wildlife community. They said the plan was “ecologically unsound” besides being costly and “may serve as a distraction rather than help global cheetah conservation efforts.”
Modi ignored their fears. In 2012, the Supreme Court of India had already intervened by putting a stay on the government’s plans to import cheetahs, and in 2013, the apex court reaffirmed its position, emphasizing the necessity for the government to present a comprehensive study before any consideration could be given to introducing cheetahs from Africa.
In 2017, the National Tiger Conservation Authority in India made an appeal to the apex court to reconsider its decision. Following the appeal, the Supreme Court granted permission in 2020 to introduce the cheetah on an “experimental basis.”
Many raised objections.
‘Flawed from the start’
As time passed, the fears of the wildlife community began to materialize as one by one, the big cats started losing their lives. Since March this year, a total of eight—including three cubs born to a Namibian cheetah named Jwala—have lost their lives at the park, adding to the growing toll of cheetah deaths.
Many argued the grand project—which cost $6 million so far—is on the brink of failure.
Dr. Arjun M. Gopalaswamy, a renowned big cat scientist in India told The Daily Beast: “The project was already flawed but now these unforeseen deaths, inexplicable deaths have made it far worse than what we thought.” He says the project is now at a “salvage point.”
India, despite the mounting demographic pressure, has lost only one large wild species of mammals since its independence from the British in 1947—the cheetah. And hence its reintroduction “has a very special significance for the national conservation ethic and ethos.” The Indian government believes that bringing back the cheetah will have “equally important conservation ramifications.”
India’s hidden COVID deaths: Was the toll in 2020 eight times higher? | Health News | Al Jazeera
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India had nearly 1.2 million excess deaths in 2020, new data shows. The life expectancy of Muslims fell the most among all Indians – by more than five years.
New Delhi, India – India’s actual death toll during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic that ravaged the world’s most populous country could be eight times higher than the government’s official numbers, reveals a new study.
While that initial wave of the virus caught the world off guard, leaving governments and health systems scrambling for responses, India, after implementing a strict lockdown, appeared to have escaped the worst of its effects. The country was devastated by the delta variant in 2021 when hospitals ran out of beds and oxygen, people died gasping outside healthcare facilities and rows upon rows of smouldering pyres chequered cremation grounds across the country.
But the new research suggests that the first wave, while not as deadly as the one in 2021, wrought far greater devastation than has been acknowledged until now.
What does the new research show?
The study, co-authored by 10 demographers and economists from elite international institutes, found that India had 1.19 million excess deaths in 2020, during the pandemic’s first wave, compared to 2019.
That’s eight times India’s official COVID-19 toll for 2020, of 148,738 deaths. The study was published Friday in the Science Advances publication.
The numbers in the research, based on the Indian government’s 2019-21 National Family Health Survey (NFHS), a comprehensive report on the state of the country’s health and family welfare, are also 1.5 times the World Health Organization’s (WHO) estimate for India’s COVID-19 death toll in 2020.
India’s own total count of deaths from the virus until the end of 2021 stands at 481,000.
But the new research also uncovers deep inequalities among the pandemic’s victims – based on gender, caste and religion.
Did COVID kill some communities disproportionately?
The research found that in 2020, the life expectancy of an upper-caste Indian of the Hindu faith went down by 1.3 years. By contrast, the average lifespan for people from ‘scheduled castes’ – communities that for centuries faced the worst discrimination under the caste system – went down by 2.7 years.
Indian Muslims suffered the worst: Their life expectancy went down by 5.4 years in 2020.
These communities had lower life expectancy at birth relative to high-caste Hindus even before the pandemic, the study noted. “The pandemic exacerbated these disparities,” it added. “These declines are comparable or larger in absolute magnitude to those experienced by Native Americans, Blacks, and Hispanics in the United States in 2020.”