Covid 19 And Indian Economy

1) This is a comprehensive book on the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the Indian economy. 2) It discusses various socio-economic issues related to economic policies, labour, environment, and education. 3) Timely, and written by experts, this book will be of interest to departments of South Asian studies and political economy across UK.

COVID 19 pandemic has devastated the global economy, and India is one of the countries that has felt the full economic devastation of the pandemic. The pandemic led to the losses of jobs of millions of people. It also led to the abrupt halting of the economic activities in various sectors. It affected both the industrial production and services sectors of the Indian economy. The impact of the pandemic on the economy is evident in the GDP growth of the country for the first quarter (April –June) and the second quarter (July- September) of the fiscal year 2020. The country has experienced for the first time consecutive periods of contraction of GDP, which made it fall into a recession economy for the first time. However, some of the blame of the adverse impact of the pandemic on the economy may be heaped on to the government. The government implemented policies have adversely aggravated the economic situation currently faced by India. In addition, the government did not implement effective measures to deal with the economic fallout of the pandemic. Since the pandemic is unique and faced by the world for the first time, the current study looked at the impact, and some of the measures that may expedite the recovery of Indian economy.

With strong macroeconomic fundamentals, the Indian economy was well-placed on trajectory of high growth rate in early 2020 when outbreak of coronavirus epidemic in China was reported. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the epidemic as a pandemic, plunging the world into an unprecedented medical crisis. When countrywide lockdown was announced from March 25, 2020, most of the economic activities came to a grinding halt in urban areas. However, rural India continued to be normal in view of the exemption from restrictions allowed to farmers to conduct farming operations, including harvesting and transporting their produce to grain markets with the general conditions of face covering, hand hygiene and social distancing. These exemptions helped to maintain continuity in supply chain, especially in view of harvesting and sowing season.To deal with the economic challenges caused by the pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the creation of 'COVID-19 Economic Response Task Force' under the Union Finance Minister. Similarly, PM CARES Fund was created to deal with any kind of emergency or distress situation.On May 12, 2020, the Prime Minister announc

Since the first outbreak of the novel Corona Virus in Wuhan (China), many changes have taken place in the world, and India has no exception to it. Even today, we can find the impact of the virus all around us as many educational institutions are not yet completely open, online classes are preferred by universities and colleges, public buses are not preferred, even in our daily life, there are many changes as people still are wearing masks for going out. Talking about the macro-level Indian economy is not able to recover from the troublesome shock that the Covid-19 in terms of loss of human lives and loss of economic activity. There is hardly any sector that has not been adversely affected as domestic demand and exports sharply plummeted with some notable exceptions. While some of the effects of covid-19 were only short-term but there are many long-lasting impacts of it as the lockdown had much impacted the supply chain. All major affected sectors are education, travel and tourism, manufacturing, retail, export, import, reduction of capital formation, etc. if these aspects are not given deep thought, how the Indian economy can recover from the fast growth that it has left behind due to pandemic. The book tries to discuss all these aspects in a single cover.

How India's COVID-19 lockdown is creating an unprecedented humanitarian disaster With the advent of COVID-19, India’s rulers imposed the world’s most stringent lockdown on an already depressed economy, dealing a body blow to the majority of India’s billion-plus population. Yet the Indian government’s spending to cushion the lockdown’s economic impact ranked among the world’s lowest in GDP terms, resulting in unprecedented unemployment and hardship. Crisis and Predation shows how this tight-fistedness stems from the fact that global financial interests oppose any sizable expansion of public spending by India, and that Indian rulers readily adhere to their guidance. The authors reveal that global investors and a handful of top Indian corporate groups actually benefit from the resulting demand depression: armed with funds, they are picking up valuable assets at distress prices. Meanwhile, under the banner of reviving private investment, India’s rulers have planned giant privatizations, and drastically revised laws concerning industrial labor, the peasantry, and the environment—in favor of large capital. And yet, this book contends, India could defy the pressures of global finance in order to address the basic needs of its people. But this would require shedding reliance on foreign capital flows, and taking a course of democratic national development. This, then, is a pursuit, not for India’s ruling classes, but a course of struggle for India's people.

The health and economic impacts of COVID-19 on India have been substantial, with wide variation across states and union territories. This paper quantifies the impact of containment measures and voluntary social distancing on both the spread of the virus and the economy at the state level during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We construct a de-facto measure of state-level social distancing, combining containment strigency and observed mobility trends. State-level empirical analysis suggests that social distancing and containment measures effectively reduced case numbers, but came with high economic costs. State characteristics, such as health care infrastructure and the share of services in the economy, played an important role in shaping the health and economic outcomes, highlighting the importance of adequate social spending, health care infrastructure, and social safety nets.

The Book Indian economy is witnessing an unprecedented situation due to outbreak of deadly pandemic COVID-19 which has affected almost every socio-economic sectors of the country. Indisputably, it will have a huge adverse impact on Indian economy, revival and healing of the same would require, more or less, two to three years restoring normalcy in various sectors. The main task before the government and policy formulation agencies is to convert challenges arising due to pandemic into opportunities for Post-COVID era. The government announced a number of measures to fight with the emerging situations which includes food and health security, reforms in banking and other financial institutions, infusing financial incentives for different sectors of the economy. Due to various phases of lockdowns, almost every sector of the economy is badly affected but a few sectors like Food retailing, FMCG, Pharmaceutical etc. are all put to make out considerable growth in the Post-COVID period. This paper reveals the forthcoming impact of the emerging situations on various sectors of the economy and suggests a set of policy recommendations to convert challenges into opportunities for the Indian economy. This Book helps how to diagnose all kinds of problems occurring during the period of Lockdown and also what is going on inside the Indian Economy. This book will also be suitable for researchers and policy makers.