Rising Inequalities in Post Covid India

Rising Inequalities in Post Covid India

In the whole covid year it has again reminded us about the rising inequalities in India. A recent Pew report said that India’s middle class people decreased by 1/3 and that too the people who earn less than $2 per day have doubled and the billionaires who do white collar jobs have increased by 35%. The Pew report has also warned the rising inequalities because of pandemic can worsen the conditions.

The Concerns behind Them

The Economic Slowdown due to pandemic has grew much worse because of many reasons some of them are:-

• The ongoing economic slowdown the already issue of rising unemployment, malnutrition i.e... child stunting, child wasting, obesity and many more things seen in the children of less than 5 years of age, and India was aiming a target of $5 Trillion economy by 2025 which is now extended and because of pandemic many countries GDP grew in negative % whereas only china’s economy grew by positive 3.2%, and there were many more problems addressing India like rural distress, low income and wide spreading the Inequality.

• India’s large vulnerable rural sector dependent for jobs and surviving on many governmental schemes the worst pandemics impact has seen on them. Inequalities were there earlier also but the pandemic has increased them further.

Inequalities in gender gap have seen increase a lot as the employment rate is still 2.5% low as compared to the pre covid era also women lost more jobs as compared to men.

Stopping Inequality

There are 3 strategies by which Inequality can be stopped those are:-

• Increasing Employment and focusing on wages

• Raising Human Development

• Setting some minimum wages for workers.

The investment rate which was 39% in the year 2011-12 now has reduced to 31.7% in the year 2018-19 this has to be improved. Investments in Infrastructure sector can create employment. And in recent budget also they have emphasized on infrastructure development.

Also only 2.3% of India’s workforce has skilled persons who has the updated skills which are necessary but whereas compared to 96% in South Korea, 80% in japan and 52% in United States so, we’ll need to improve this.

Other than covid in Health sector.

Covid-19 has emerged us to look into the health sector and make more improvements in it. Whereas public expenditure on health sector is only 1.5% of GDP which is very low and that too the apart from the vaccination cost. We need to move towards universal health sector and spend at least 2-3% of GDP.

In Education sector at this time period there is no much inequality because now day’s online education is going on.

Richer sections have to pay more taxes as their incomes is higher so, similarly the inequalities between the center and states should be reduced. State budgets should emphasize spending more on public health and infrastructure so as to increase the employment.

Conclusion.

In the post covid-19 world, addressing inequality is important for higher and sustainable economic growth and the well-being of the population.

• Blog Written by Jitisha .S. Hiremath.