The continued support of Anurag Behar, Harini Nagendra and Arjun Jayadev at Azim Premji University has been critical to the work of the Center for Sustainable Employment and the State of Working India project. The Azim Premji University CLIPS was conducted in collaboration with several civil society organizations to understand the economic impact of the lockdown on the livelihoods of informal workers.
List of Tables
List of Boxes
MSME: Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises NBFC: Non-Banking Financial Corporation NCAER: National Council for Applied Economic Research. NCAER-DMAS: National Council for Applied Economic Research- Delhi NCR Metropolitan Area Study: National Capital Region.
List of State Abbreviations
We must learn from the experience of the last year so as not to repeat the mistakes. It analyzes information from the first year of the pandemic to learn for the near and not-so-near future.
Executive Summary
1 / Employment and incomes bounced back in June 2020 but recovery remained incomplete
The representation index is a ratio of the state's share of job loss to its share of the pre-Covid total workforce.
2 / Women and younger workers were
According to the Indian Labor Survey conducted in Karnataka and Rajasthan, the proportion of working women who cooked more than 2 hours a day increased from 20 percent to nearly 62 percent in Karnataka and from 12 to 58 percent in Rajasthan. No effect: It did not lose work during or after the lock. Restoration: Work lost during lockout and restored by Dec.
3 / There was a large increase in informal
For Hindus, agriculture was a major backward sector, absorbing 10 to 20 percent of workers from other sectors. For Muslims, trade was the largest sector of return, and about 20 to 35 percent of workers from other sectors were now in trade.
4 / Poorer households were worse affected, and poverty and inequality has increased
The first panel is the change in the number of people and the bottom panel is the change in the proportion of people below the national minimum wage threshold. The change observed is the change between the covid months (March to October 2020) and the previous months (July 2019 to February 2020).
5 / Households coped by decreasing food intake and by borrowing
6 / Government relief measures helped, but exclusions were also common
7 / Bold measures will be required to emerge stronger from the crisis
One day the pandemic will be behind us, and the task of economic recovery will include addressing weak structural transformation, persistent informality and insufficient job creation. We hope that the findings in this report contribute to the difficult journey of economic revival that lies ahead for India.
Introduction
The nature of the shock delivered by the pandemic is complex and will play out for years to come. Azim Premji University CLIPS was conducted in collaboration with various civil society organizations to understand the economic impact of.
Endnotes
The second round of the survey took place between October 7 and December 23, where we re-interviewed 2,778 of the 4,942 respondents from the first round. In this second round of the survey, respondents were asked about their work and earnings in either September, October or November depending on the month of the interview.
The Indian
The scale of the covid shock surpasses any previous recessionary episode in independent India. But this impact must be understood in the context of the performance of the economy leading up to the pandemic.
2.1 / The pre-Covid slowdown
In this chapter, we analyze the decade before 2020 with a focus on employment, incomes and structural changes.
The Indian economy prior to the pandemic
This led to a decline in the pace of growth in the volume of world trade and industrial production, especially from January 2018 onwards. A worrying indicator about the welfare impact of the slowdown comes from leakage.
2.2 / Employment
The first reason relates to a weak transmission mechanism from the repo rate to long-term interest rates (Anand and Azad, 2019).5 The second reason relates to the downward rigidity of interest rates in developing countries such as India, as interest rates are kept higher than those in developed countries rule to avoid capital outflows. In general, the limitations of undertaking demand management policies do not become apparent in the midst of buoyant global demand.
In summary, when the pandemic hit, the Indian economy was in the midst of a serious slowdown, triggered by global and domestic, short-term and long-term, random and structural factors. With a sharp reduction in the growth rate of production and expectations at a given interest rate, and amidst the downward rigidity of interest rates, the effectiveness of monetary policy remained limited.
2.2.1 / Absolute fall in the workforce: 2011-2017 6
The result was an increase in public unemployment as well as a drop in the labor force participation rate. Second, there was an absolute decrease in the number of women involved in additional economic activities in agriculture.
2.2.2 / An employment recovery cut short?
To summarize, two points are worth highlighting regarding the employment trends between 2011-12 and 2017-18. First, the pace of job creation for men as well as women fell well short of what was required given the increase in the working-age population.
2.2.3 / Youth unemployment
Thus, open unemployment was virtually absent for less educated and for older workers entering the pandemic. First, despite formal educational qualifications, the educated workforce either does not have the necessary skills required in the labor market, or the economy does not generate jobs for this category in the necessary numbers.
2.3 / Weak structural transformation prior to
For older workers (over 30), the unemployment rate fell to three percent: four percent for those with a graduate or postgraduate degree, and to less than two percent for older workers with less education (Figure 2.2 ). Second, after looking for work for several years in their twenties, most workers eventually find work, even if it doesn't match their skills or aspirations.
2.3.1 / Kuznets process
2.3.2 / Lewis process
NSSO-PLFS data also allow us to estimate the share of the labor force with access to some form of employment or social security through employment. So, regardless of the scale of production or the type of employment contracts, 80 to 90 percent of the workforce worked in or in micro-enterprises.
2.3.3 / Labour earnings prior to the pandemic
A slow pace of structural transformation and a lack of political commitment to improving working conditions trapped a large part of the workforce without access to any employment security or. However, as we saw earlier, they only make up about 10 percent of the workforce.
2.3.4 / Intersection of sectoral structure and informality
2.4 / Conclusion
2 https://www.firstpost.com/business/gdp-data- without-demonetisation-impact-on-informal- sector-lacks-credibility-3310764.html. 13 The share of employment in the unorganized sector is smaller in urban areas (64 percent) compared to rural areas (88.5 percent).
Employment loss and recovery
The aim is to bring together evidence from different sources on the nature of the impact to date and provide an empirical basis for policy action. The latter are often targeted studies, targeting a specific demographic of workers, and while not representative of the entire country, provide valuable insight into the nature of the impact on different types of workers.
3.1 / Massive job losses during the lockdown
However, around 42 percent of workers who resumed after the shutdown reported being only partially employed (Action Aid 2020). Box 3.2 : What do official statistics say about the impact of the lockdown on the labor market.
3.2 / Beyond the
If we estimate WPRs after excluding these individuals, the April-June 2020 male WPR is 47 percent and female WPR was 14 percent.3 For males, this WPR from PLFS is almost exactly the same as that estimated by CMIE-CPHS . Also, the sample size in this round is about 96 percent of the previous year's April-June quarterly sample.
3 We calculated the size of the urban labor force by applying the WPRs given in the quarterly reports to the working-age population projections. This was divided by the overall working age population to arrive at 'modified WPRs' comparable to CMIE-CPHS.
On the other hand, Karnataka, West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand are under-represented in the job loss numbers compared to their share in the total labor force. The explanation lies in the fact that a large proportion of women who were previously out of the labor force or unemployed have entered the labor force.
3.3 / Trajectories of employment
Overall, while the immediate impact of the shutdown in terms of job losses was harsher in urban areas, it also experienced a sharper recovery after the shutdown. As a result, the long-term persistence of the impact—either in the form of no recovery or a delayed course of job loss—was not very different between the two regions, with about 14 percent of the rural labor force and 16 percent of the rural labor force. the urban labor force in December 2019 loses employment and continues to be unemployed in December 2020.
3.3.1 / Women were
But in urban areas, a greater proportion, 32 per cent, were able to return to work after losing employment, compared to 25 per cent. in rural areas (figure 3.4). It is well known that employment status in India is highly correlated with gender, caste, religion and age, and it is likely that the shutdown had different consequences for workers based on their social identity.
While married women are less likely to return to work, married men are more likely to return to work, reflecting the gendered nature of work responsibilities (male breadwinner and female domestic help). Muslim women are more likely to stop working after losing their job, while this has not had such a significant impact on Muslim men.
Findings from Azim Premji University CLIPS
While education protected male workers from job loss, while higher educated men were less likely to lose their jobs, higher educated women were more likely to lose their jobs. On the other hand, CLIPS was primarily an informal survey of employees, so both men and women are likely to be affected in the same way.
3.3.2 / Lower caste workers were more vulnerable to job loss but
3.3.4 / Workers from poorer households were more likely to
12.4 7.2 38 percent of workers from the lowest quintiles returned to work compared to only 12 percent in the highest quintile. The nature of employment for low-income workers is likely to be characterized by ease of entry and exit.
3.4 / MSMEs distress and employment
The survey also showed that 62 percent of the entrepreneurs of temporarily closed companies and 64 percent of the working ones are confident in the recovery. NCAER-DCVTS found in Round 3 of the survey that 63 percent of businesses either completely closed or suspended operations during the quarantine months from April to May 2020.16 In addition, only 22 percent were able to retain all of their workers, while 39 percent were unable to . pay any wages.
3.5 / Conclusion
Based on that discussion, I continue to pay two of my staff members who were willing to come in for work and keep the others unpaid." My workers went with a plan to return after Diwali for work, hoping that business would resume by then.
Chapter Appendix : On the question of measuring women’s paid work
However, this cannot explain the entire difference because the proportion of women in paid work is also lower in the CMIE-CPHS data. Most of the micro-enterprises in the sample are located in third-tier cities or rural areas.
Informalisation and earnings
Job loss, described in the previous chapter, is only one of three different effects that the pandemic has had on workers. And for many of those who remained in work or returned to work, earnings have fallen.
Informalisation and earnings losses
In addition, those who returned to work often had to settle for more precarious jobs (increasing informality). Before we continue, it's worth noting what the pandemic has done on a macroeconomic level to the labor share of income in the economy.
4.1 / Decomposing
Labor income data is available from CMIE-CPHS for the second quarter (July-August-September). Since the labor force also fell between these two periods, GDP per employee remained more or less unchanged (I41,126 versus I41,115 per month).
CMIE-CPHS broadly categorizes workers into permanent, temporary, self-employed and daily wage workers. For the temporary salaries, declines in average earnings and the loss of jobs contributed more or less equally to the overall decline in income, suggesting that this type of worker is vulnerable on both fronts.
4.2 / Increased informality during
4.2.1 / Transitions in employment arrangements
Previously, I had worked as 'Vikar TW 1' at the same factory four years back, in 2016. While paid work was equally stable in rural and urban areas during the base period, during the pandemic period only 41 percent of rural areas were permanently employed (compared to 51 percent of permanent wage earners in the cities) were able to retain their employment arrangements.
4.2.2 / Social identities and employment transitions
13 percent of permanent workers and about 16 percent of daily wage workers quit. For example, 21 percent of self-employed women moved to more precarious day jobs.
4.2.3 / How secure were
In contrast, about 18 per cent of SC or ST workers shifted to daily wage labour. For example, 43, 38 and 36 per cent of upper caste workers on daily wages, permanent wages and temporary wages converted to self-employment, the corresponding percentages for SC workers were 23, 23 and 21 per cent respectively. .
For example, 13 percent of permanent wage earners in the first income quintile switched to day-wage work, while only 2 percent of those in the 4th quintile switched to day-wage work. Even for those permanent salaried workers who remain employed, working conditions may have become more difficult and poorer.
4.3 / Increased informality was
Moreover, those at the lower end of the income distribution are more likely to move into unemployment and out of the labor force than those at the top, thus suggesting greater stability in permanent jobs. salaried with higher incomes.7 Therefore, there is a diversity of work within the permanent variations in wages and associated job security. The map shown in Figure 4.6 shows that even states hit hard in terms of overall job losses such as Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu (see Chapter Three) saw a smaller share of permanent wage workers becoming informal, compared to Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
4.3.1 / Evidence from CMIE- CPHS data
Finally, CMIE-CPHS has been reporting income data at the household and individual level since 2014. Even if CMIE-CPHS level estimates are higher than actual incomes, we may still be able to get a good idea of the extent of the decline in incomes due to the pandemic.
4.3.2 / Evidence for large income losses over several months from
June earnings for home-based workers in Tiruppur had recovered to only 14 percent of pre-lockdown levels. In Ahmedabad, average earnings in June were only 30 percent of February's level.
4.4 / Agriculture and petty trade were the key
On the other hand, about 15 to 18 percent of ST workers moved into construction from other sectors (Appendix Table 10). For Hindus, agriculture is a major fallback sector, absorbing between 23 percent (construction) to 10 percent (modern services) of workers.
4.5 / Conclusion
7 While there is a similar sequence of transitions from permanent wage employment across income quintiles in the base year, i.e. in the same months of the base period (2018 and 2019), there was a 10 percent drop in real wages, indicating the impact of the economic slowdown discussed in Chapter Two.
Falling
We then show that the impact has been regressive, with poorer households losing a larger share of their already low incomes. Our analysis is primarily based on monthly household income data from the CMIE-CPHS (see Appendix Part Two for details).
Falling incomes, rising
In addition, we use data from the India Working Survey (IWS) and the Azim Premji University Covid-19 Livelihoods Phone Survey (CLIPS) (see Appendix, Sections Three and Four for details). Finally, where relevant, we include other targeted studies conducted to understand the impact of the pandemic.
The analysis presented in chapters three and four shows large and sustained losses in employment and labor income. Finally, we show that households absorbed the shock by borrowing (largely from informal sources), selling possessions, cutting back on food consumption, and increasing pressure on women's time.
5.1 / The pandemic
We are continuing our research into the economic impact of Covid-19 and containment measures by shifting the focus from workers to households. Our analysis shows that households lost an average of about 22 percent of their cumulative income over eight months (March 2020 through October 2020).
This is likely to manifest itself at the household level in a variety of ways, including reduced incomes, increased debt and increased food insecurity.
5.1.1 / Average household incomes - trends and cumulative losses
Finally, another indicator of an incomplete recovery in incomes is that household incomes in October 2020 were 17 percent lower in real terms compared to the same month last year (October 2019). Seasonally adjusted cumulative income was 22 percent lower in the months March through October.
5.1.2 / Event study model of income dynamics
At the time of writing, we have data available for the Covid period from March 2020 to October 2020. For an average household in urban areas, this equates to losing 2.1 months of income (about I64,000 for a family of four) and in rural areas losing 1.7 months' income (about I34,000 for a family of four).
5.1.3 / State-level analysis
See appendix part 2 for the event study model and seasonality and inflation adjustments. Sources and Comments: Authors' calculations based on CMIE-CPHS data for the months of March through October 2020 compared to February 2020.
5.2 / The impact was felt more severely by
5.2.1 / Income losses across the distribution
5.2.2 / A large increase in poverty
Indeed, an overwhelming majority of individuals were under the 7th CPC even before the pandemic (81 percent in rural areas and 62 percent in urban areas). The World Bank estimates that global poverty (under the $1.90 per day threshold) will increase for the first time in twenty years with South Asia contributing 61 percent of this increase (75 million increase in South Asia and 119 million across globe). The main contribution within South Asia is estimated to come from India.
5.2.3 / Event study analysis by income deciles
The graphs plot the proportional change in income per per capita estimated separately for rural and urban areas using an incident survey framework for each income decile (D1 to D10). The event survey estimates measure the impact of the pandemic and containment measures on monthly household income per per capita, controlling for various household characteristics.
5.2.4 / Inequality increased during the pandemic
5.3 / Coping strategies among vulnerable
Households in all income groups reported resorting to saving, with the proportion of households using this strategy not differing significantly across income groups. Even in the case of this negative coping strategy, there was a clear reduction in the proportion of households that resorted to borrowing as household incomes increased.
5.3.1 / Decline in food intake
The figure outlines the response of survey respondents on the level of food recycling experienced by their households after the lockdown. Again, similar to CLIPS, the survey found that 66 percent had less to eat than before the pandemic, even five months after the shutdown.
5.3.2 / Increase in household debt and sale of assets
Another 23 percent cited food, health and other daily expenses as one of the main reasons why they had to sell or borrow (figure 5.10). More than 45 per cent of the households whose food intake was unaffected did not need to sell assets or borrow (Table 5.2).
5.3.3 / Social networks
Downs-Tepper, Krishna and Rains (2021) document the experiences of two such communities – slum dwellers in Bengaluru and Patna. The worst health impacts of the pandemic were concentrated in a small number of neighborhoods in Bengaluru, while it was more widespread in Patna.
5.3.4 / Impact on education
Based on a sample of 40 slums in Bengaluru and Patna, the authors interviewed 120 key respondents six times over three months to document the health and economic impacts of the pandemic and lockdown. In April 2020, based on interviews, the authors estimate that about 50 percent of heads of household in Bengaluru and 82 percent in Patna lost their primary source of income.
5.4 / Conclusion
3 To estimate the cumulative average income in the Covid months, only households for which income data are reported in all the Covid months (March 2020 to October 2020) are used. Similarly, only households reporting data in the eight months before Covid are used to calculate median household income in the pre-Covid period (July 2019 to February 2020).
India’s social protection
Even if the self-employed (self-employed carers and unpaid family members) are excluded from the assessment, such reservations are available to only 26 percent of wage earners. The Asian Development Bank estimated that India spent 1.7 percent of GDP on social protection (excluding health) in 2009 (ADB 2013).
India’s social protection architecture
The Social Security Report of the National Commission on Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS 2006) notes that India does not have a comprehensive national social security policy for the entire workforce. As we saw in the second chapter, social security and insurance measures are related to the employer or work.
6.1 / Social protection programmes - some
Unfortunately, as we saw in Chapter Two, stable and unique employer-employee relationships exist for less than 10 percent of the Indian workforce. Of these three, which should be preferred usually depends on the quantity and quality of the relevant infrastructure (physical or digital), digital or formal literacy, as well as more subtle factors such as familiarity with existing systems or unfamiliarity with new ones.
6.2 / General social
Narayanan (2011) notes that unconditional cash transfers work well where no specific goal is targeted but instead a general safety net is to be provided – for example, old-age pensions. For example, cash transfers suffer from smaller leakages but have proven to be much less comprehensive than PDS due to a lack of banking infrastructure.
On the other hand, if the intention is to promote a particular developmental goal, such as better nutrition, increased school attendance and so on, then conditional transfers, vouchers or direct provision of the good or service work better. On the other hand, PDS has proven to be more inclusive during the crisis, but generally suffers from more leakage problems than direct money transfers, in some cases by more than 50 percent (Gulati and Saini 2015).
6.2.1 / The Public Distribution System (PDS)
As we will see in the next chapter, this system has proved to be crucial in 2020, especially in its expanded form under Prime Minister Garib Kalyan Yojana. This is to ensure that the identity of the person using the grain in the store can be verified and the transaction recorded in the system.
6.2.2 / The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment
As Jean Drèze notes in his foreword to the report, pensioners and workers in rural Jharkhand had "the greatest possible difficulties in accessing their meager payments", including denials for unknown reasons, ignorance. While these problems should diminish over time, Jean Drèze observes that "bank payment methods have been constantly changing, causing periodic waves of new transition problems for several years".
6.2.3 / National Social Assistance Programme
6.2.4 / Cash transfer programmes
The FII survey finds that 78 percent of poor female respondents have a bank account, but only 23 percent have a PMJDY account. The FII survey found that 26 percent of poor women live more than 5 km away from the nearest bank or ATM.
6.3 / Programmes
6.3.1 / Contributory insurance programmes for informal workers
Hamal Panchayat and Mathadi Kamgar Union were actively involved in the formulation and implementation of the law. Another challenge concerns the issue of waste collection at the established rate of 1 percent of the total construction cost and its proper distribution among the workers.
6.4 / Direct Benefit Transfer: Issues in
Failures between enrollment and successful crediting of payments to the beneficiary's account are particularly annoying. Failures between successful crediting to the account and cash-in-hand constitute the last mile problems of welfare delivery.
6.5 / Conclusion
17 https://jansoochna.rajasthan.gov.in/ og https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a- milestone-in-greater-transparency-accountability/. 21 https://www.ideasforindia.in/topics/poverty-inequality/Covid-19-relief-are-women-jan-dhan- accounts-the-right-choice-for-cash-transfers.html.
Effectiveness
This is necessarily an overview of the landscape and not a deep dive into any program or scheme. Finally, this chapter also analyzes some information on migrant workers, a group that has highlighted the shortcomings of the current social protection architecture.
Effectiveness of the
One measure of the uniqueness and scale of the current crisis is that almost all types of social protection measures available to government (central and state), whether promotional or protective, citizenship-based or work-related, legal rights or schemes put into use. PDS, MGNREGA, cash transfers, worker welfare boards, trust funds, all have proved crucial in the last year.
Covid-19 policy response
In this chapter, we first place India's fiscal response in a comparative international perspective.1 Then we review the evidence on the reach and effectiveness of some key systems such as Mahatma Gandhi's Public Distribution System (PDS). National Rural Employment Act (MGNREGA), National Social Assistance Program (NSAP), Jan Dhan cash transfers and welfare boards.
7.1 / Estimating the size of India’s fiscal
To arrive at the actual net stimulus, we strip out increased interest payments (I0.81 lakh crores), payments by FCI to correct the mishandling of its previous year's loans from the National Small Savings Fund (NSSF) (I1.94 lakh crores) and increased spending for Defense (10.25 lakh crores). Taking these figures into account, we estimate that the total additional expenditure in 2020-21 compared to that incurred in 2019-20 was about 14.5 lakh crores.
7.2 / Policy measures undertaken during
2020) analyzed the PMGKY package and concluded that the allocation was insufficient and should be in the range of three to 3.75 lakh crore. Compared to 2019-20, revenue was lower by Rs 1.6 lakh crore (of which revenue was lower by Rs 1.3 lakh crore) and expenditure increased by Rs 17.5 lakh crore (of which revenue expenditure increased by I6.5 lakh crores).
7.2.1 / Food relief via the Public Distribution System
Of these, 41 percent of priority households received more than 5 kg of grain per person, which means that cash transfers amounted to an average of 40 percent of GDP per capita in the lower middle income group.
7.2.2 / Cash transfers
In the Indus Action survey, 60 percent of households reported receiving Jan Dhan transfers (Table 3 of the report). Jan Dhan had a penetration rate of about 50 percent among poor households and about 70 percent of eligible households.
7.2.3 / Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
Thirty-five percent of rural households were not even aware of the program in Karnataka, while in Rajasthan the figure was only two percent. In addition, the share of those who had worked in the program or had a job card was just over 60 percent in Rajasthan but only 22 percent in Karnataka.
7.2.4 / Building and other construction workers (BOCW)
To enable widespread registration of workers, the government also plans to allow workers to self-register or choose to renew their registration – through an online or missed call facility and self-declaration by submitting Aadhaar and bank account details (without having to submit employers' data). The government will also pressure the states to make better use of the cess funds intended for construction workers.
7.2.5 / Employee Provident Fund system
It also plans to provide financial incentives for construction worker registration or renewal. In addition, the government is proposing to issue a migration certificate to all employees once they are registered as there is no dynamic all-India portal and each state has its own individual database which may or may not be able to transfer data from other databases. wear. online via their mobile number.
7.3 / State-level innovations and
The first is to use an existing database to provide emergency relief - for example, the provision of dry rations to the ration card holders. Second, to provide relief to those adjacent to the database - for example, people with a pending application for registration under specific schemes.
7.3.1 / Augmentation of PDS and cash transfers
Fourth, using an alternative database as a proxy - for example, occupational status is used as an indicator for vulnerability and addressing potential exclusions from specific social protection schemes. Fifth, creating new databases with expanded criteria—for example, the Bihar government ordered district officials to list migrants who do not fall under the coverage of the state's NFSA or PDS.
7.3.2 / Urban employment generation programmes
In case of an external implementing agency contracted for work, payment made to the beneficiary will be adjusted/deducted from the accounts of the implementing agency before being paid. Implementing agency is Urban Development Department and the head of the civic body will be the nodal officer.
7.4 / Private sector relief efforts
7.5 / Migrant workers as a test-case for social
7.5.1 / Multiple vulnerabilities
Seasonal migrants are the most vulnerable and their working and living conditions (two thirds of seasonal migrants live in workplaces) severely limit their ability to access social protection. A combination of vulnerabilities (class, caste, ethnic or linguistic identity, and lack of stable residence and political voice) make occasional wage migrants in industries such as construction the most precarious and difficult to reach with social protection policies.
7.5.2 / Estimating the migrant workforce
This includes lack of access to the PDS and, in many cases, even to the banking system (Srivastava 2020).
7.5.3 / Impact of the pandemic and reach of protection measures
Kerala's response to the immediate needs of the migrant workers benefited from a pre-existing infrastructure targeting migrant workers in the state and the active role of community institutions. After the floods and landslides that devastated large parts of the state in 2018 and 2019, the government undertook an evaluation to understand the ways in which migrant workers were excluded from relief and rehabilitation measures.
7.6 / Conclusion
2 Ta Razdelek said he was injured in Basole (2021) in at https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-covid-19-fiscal-response-and-india-standing/. 46 https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/govt-has-no-data-of-migrant-workers-death-loss-of-job/.
Policy
As India grapples with a much more serious second wave of the coronavirus, it is imperative that we learn from the first wave. In the previous chapters, we outlined the nature and extent of the impact of one year of the pandemic on employment, income and household welfare.
Policy recommendations for the short and
Based on this analysis, in this final chapter we propose a series of short-term (several months) and medium-term (several years) policy measures.1. And in the event of a lockdown where work is halted, there is a demand for compensation in the form of food and the provision of a health safety net.
A policy roadmap is needed to address the short-term challenge of supporting vulnerable livelihoods in the coming months, as well as the medium-term objective of reviving employment and incomes in the coming years. In recent months we have also discussed the existing architecture of social security and how it has been deployed.
8.1 / Making up for the first wave and meeting
8.1.1 / Policy Measures in the short and medium-run to strengthen
And it's largely the case that program wages are set lower than state minimum wages. This is particularly important against the background of the fact that the financial resources for the program have been capped in recent years.
8.2 / A National Employment Policy
Role of private contractors: public works in most towns and cities are undertaken by private contractors.
8.2.1 / Framework for the policy
Only when Indian firms become competitive in the world market (export orientation) will they be able to offer quality goods to the Indian consumer and eventually compete with foreign firms for the domestic market (as protection will not last forever). The long-term policy objective of a universal social security floor has gained a special. importance in the context of the pandemic.
8.2.2 / Select policy interventions
A clear multi-sectoral focus that recognises the links between local manufacturing and
There is an enormous stock of productive and entrepreneurial talent in the informal economy that can be exploited (see next section). The role of the latter, together with local producer associations, in enabling cluster growth is well documented.
8.3 / The fiscal situation and the road ahead
India's One District, One Product schemes (inspired by One Village, One Product in Japan and One Tambon, One Product in Thailand) are a good start, but in reality a district often has more than one product with the potential to be developed for national and international use. markets. There is also an extensive policy and academic literature cataloging why previous policy attempts have failed to introduce dynamism to clusters and scale them up.
