COVID

Your Money: Tax exemption on Covid-19 treatment expenses paid by employer CBDT has now decided to provide income tax exemption to the amount received for medical treatment from employer or from the third-party for treatment of Covid-19 during FY 2019-20 and subsequent years. More I-T relief sought for COVID-19 bills Vikas Dhoot JUNE 26, 2021 https://www.thehindu.com/business/more-i-t-relief-sought-for-covid-19-bills/article34993840.ece The fact that tax exemption to employers is considered and announced first, and not a tax deductability to individuals who have spend for COVID on their own, particularly since most individuals were discouraged from hospitalisation so that they could avail of insurance.. shows that the government is thinking of the employers.. rather than the individual.. their belief in the trickle down is complete. Unfortunately most Smal buiness dont pay for empoyee midical expenses, especially when they were lockdown. The same is the trend for the relief packages announced by the finance minister.. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announces relief measures amid second COVID-19 wave in India JUNE 28, 2021 https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/finance-minister-nirmala-sitharaman-announces-relief-measures-amid-second-covid-19-wave-in-india-7096661.html https://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/nirmala-sitharaman-unveils-new-covid-recovery-package-expands-credit-relief/article35020572.ece Calling the measures an effort to stimulate growth, exports and employment as well as provide relief to COVID-affected sectors, Ms. Sitharaman announced an expansion of the existing Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) by ₹1.5 lakh crore. She also announced a new ₹7,500 crore scheme to guarantee loans upto ₹1.25 lakh to small borrowers through micro-finance institutions. “Setting aside the guarantee schemes and the announcements that had already been made earlier, the step up in the fiscal outgo within 2021-22 based on the fresh announcements is estimated at around ₹60,000 crore,” said Aditi Nayar, rating agency ICRA’s chiefeconomist. Economist D.K. Srivastava reckoned that the additional burden on the 2021-22 Budget from the ‘three direct stimulus initiatives’ — providing free foodgrains, incremental health projects’ spending, and rural connectivity — would be ₹1,18,390 crore or about 0.5%of estimated GDP for 2021-22. कांग्रेस प्रवक्ता ने सीतारमण को घेरा, कहा अर्थव्यवस्था की समझ नहीं....!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zvq3FcqnF0 Jun 29, 2021 कांग्रेस के प्रवक्ता गौरव वल्लभ ने वित्त मंत्री निर्मला सीतारमण पर निशाना साधा है. और गौरव वल्लभ ने कहा है. कि वित्त मंत्री निर्मला सीतारमण को अर्थव्यवस्था की समझ नहीं है. साथ ही बड़ी बात कही है.

As extreme poverty returns, India sees surge in child slavery https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/2/as-extreme-poverty-returns-india-sees-surge-in-child-slavery Among many gains lost to the COVID-19 pandemic, child labour shows resurgence, worsened by inadequate rescue efforts.

As the economic crisis compelled impoverished families to resort to desperate measures, evidence slowly emerged of a rise in the incidence of child labour in India.

In 2020-21, the number of children rescued and rehabilitated under the National Child Labour Project rose despite the lockdowns and restrictions on operating industries.
India’s Minister of State for Labour and Employment Rameswar Teli told the parliament that the number of children rescued was 58,289 in 2020-21, an increase from 54,894 in 2019-20, 50,284 in 2018-19 and 47,635 in 2017-2018.

India’s last census, held in 2011, pegged the total number of child labourers in India at 10.1 million.

Asked if the pandemic had caused a spike in child labour, Priyank Kanoongo, chairman of India’s National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, told Al Jazeera that children cannot be viewed or protected in a silo.

A report titled ‘State of Working India 2021: One Year of Covid­19’ brought out annually by Azim Premji University’s Centre for Sustainable Employment,

https://cse.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/State_of_Working_India_2021-One_year_of_Covid-19.pdf

Key point as blogged by dristi https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/state-of-working-india-2021-one-year-of-covid-%C2%AD19-report

Key Points
Impact on Employment: 100 million jobs were lost during the April-May 2020 lockdown. Though most of these workers had found employment by June 2020, about 15 million remained out of work.
Impact on Income: For an average household of four members, the monthly per capita income in October 2020 (Rs. 4,979) was still below its level in January 2020 (Rs. 5,989). Monthly earnings of workers fell on an average by 17% during the pandemic, with self employed and informal salaried workers facing the highest loss of earnings.
Informalisation: Post-lockdown, nearly half of salaried workers had moved into informal work, either as self-employed (30%), casual wage (10%) or informal salaried (9%).
Regressive Nature of Economic Impact: The bottom 20% of households earned nothing in the months of April and May 2020. On the other hand, the top 10% suffered the least during the lockdown, and only lost about 20% of their February income during the lockdown months.

Increase in Poverty Rate: The job loss and fall in earnings caused a large increase in poverty. Households coped with the loss of income by decreasing their food intake, selling assets and borrowing informally from friends, relatives and money­lenders. With 230 million falling below the national minimum wage threshold of Rs. 375 per day during the pandemic, poverty rate has “increased by 15 percentage points in rural and nearly 20 percentage points in urban areas”.

 

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/30/992451165/india-is-counting-thousands-of-daily-covid-deaths-how-many-is-it-missing

Mathematician Murad Banaji  By analyzing total excess deaths – i.e., the difference between total deaths in Mumbai one year, compared with the year before — he estimates that the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 would have to have been undercounted by at least two-thirds to account for the higher 2020 death tally.. "My optimistic estimate then was that for every death [from COVID-19] that was recorded during the year [2020], two more were missed."

Those calculations are based on data from Mumbai, India's richest major city, where access to health care is better than elsewhere. So the number of undercounted deaths could be even higher in less well-off parts of the country .

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/01/were-burning-pyres-all-day-india-accused-of-undercounting-deaths

“Not all those excess deaths may have been from Covid-19,” explained Banaji. “But from what we can gather from international data and studies, most probably were, and in Mumbai’s’s case, my estimate is a minimum of 60% to 70% of those additional excess deaths were from Covid.”... However, Banaji emphasised that for rural and impoverished areas of India, in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which have limited health infrastructure, death recording and Covid testing, the number of unreported Covid deaths was “likely to be huge, much greater than in a city such as Mumbai”.

“If we don’t have the data to fully understand what’s happening with this pandemic now,” said Banaji, “how can India possibly prepare for the future?”

The Pandemic and the Economic Crisis: A Global Agenda for Urgent Action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_ukBpf0PbE Jayati Ghosh, Joseph Stiglitz, Rohinton Medhora, Michael Spence, and Rob Johnson

https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/research-papers/the-pandemic-and-the-economic-crisis-a-global-agenda-for-urgent-action  The central thrust is that there are a series of actions that the developed countries could take today, at low cost to themselves, but which would be in their enlightened self-interest—and would be of enormous benefit to the billions of people in the developing world and emerging markets.

Section I focuses on worldwide access to vaccines and other medicines. The ugliness of vaccine and other aspects of pandemic nationalism.  Fear of scarcity of vaccines..

In Section II,  Most developing countries are struggling to get the funds to continue existing programs, let alone meet the additional costs imposed by the pandemic.

Section III discusses the urgency of addressing the debt issue. One way of giving more fiscal space to developing countries and emerging markets is a comprehensive standstill on debt servicing.

 

Calculating the Cost of COVID https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAZCvm6nywo

Inflation? Expanding digital currencies? What's next in this brave new world?

Jens Nordvig (Founder & CEO, Exante Data) describes what he saw as the pandemic unfolded, and where it might be taking us.

 

How Might the Pandemic Change the World Economy? [Kaushik Basu] How Might the Pandemic Change the World Economy? [Kaushik Basu] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTFYsB__R2M Professor Kaushik Basu, joins us to explore what the post-pandemic world may look like. As he envisions heightening tensions between labor interests and the interests of the capital-owning class he argues that a nation’s ultimate success will depend on how it manages this tension. Will the process of globalization witness a setback or will it surprise us by speeding up? The discussion will explore why it might indeed be the latter, and the new challenges that this will give rise to.

 

Migrant Crisis after the Lockdown

Playlist at AIPSN 

Ye Kaisi Aazadi (ये कैसी आज़ादी)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq3xavRaR8M 
May 31, 2020 Migrant Labour wants to returns home. They are facing a inhuman system at every steps. This government is careless and crucial. This is happening in a free and democratic country. Is this really a freedom and democracy.

Hume Ghar Jane Do ( हमें घर जाने दो) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGdbw8wATUs 
May 18, 2020 Labour are struggling to go home. The system is completely inhuman and barbaric. The government has to provide buses and trains to the labour.

क्या हम इंसान नहीं? Are we not human? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-qufMbZUOg 
May 9, 2020

Ye Hadasa Nahi Hatya Hai ( ये हादसा नहीं हत्या है) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I_vXGUR_5E   Labours are compelled to return their homes on foot by roads or off roads and railway lines. The government is not concerned and completely callous about labour. The government has to provide buses and trains. Labour's pain and agony is endless.. May 10, 2020

जान है तो जहान है। Let the workers go home.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-WMhwFJbi4 
May 9, 2020

इस दुर्दशा का जवाब दो!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acAapS84iWU 
May 5, 2020

 Post by N Maluste: Hope you are aware of a draconian public health bill set to be passed in monsoon assembly of parliament, giving govt officials powers at all 4 levels national, state district, block/ city
1. at a mere suspicion of an infection
2. to enter without notice your home or work premises
3. to go beyond your constitutional body rights, property rights, to test, quarantine, medicate, inject, segregate your family member or children
4. to destroy, disinfect, kill, seal off your containers, your premises, your plants, your pets, your animals,
5. and you have no redressal to any court of law as this is to be considered action in good faith.

These are extremely wide ranging powers over you. This is not ok. It is a back door surveillance & dictatorship.

The Public Health Bill 2017/2022 – Ultra Vires of Indian Constitution

A group of people comprising National Convenor of NAPM Medha Patkar, Magsaysay Award winner Prof. Sandeep Pandey, human rights activist Tushar Gandhi, former judge of the Bombay High Court BG Kolse Patil, pediatrician Dr Jacob Puliyel and several renowned Indian Citizens have written to the Union Health Minister, demanding the withdrawal of the Prospective Public Health Bill.

The Letter outlines the implications and reasons for withdrawal.

https://awakenindiamovement.com/letter-to-health-minister-phb/

Wholesale Inflation Hits Record High: How To Tame Skyrocketing Prices? | News Today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrQHWqapb2Y The wholesale price-based inflation accelerated to a record high of 12.94 per cent in May, on rising prices of crude oil and manufactured goods. Low base effect also contributed to the spike in WPI inflation in May 2021. In May 2020, WPI inflation was at (-) 3.37 per cent.
This is the fifth straight month of uptick seen in the wholesale price index (WPI)-based inflation.
In April 2021, WPI inflation hit double-digit at 10.49 per cent. "The annual rate of inflation, based on monthly WPI, was 12.94 per cent for the month of May 2021 (over May 2020) as compared to (-) 3.37 per cent in May 2020.

West Bangal finance minister Amit Mishra says that govt is believing ht eold Say's law of markets ( Say’s Law is frequently understood as supply creates its own demand, as if the simple act of supplying some good or service on the market was sufficient to call forth demand for that product. It is certainly true that producers can undertake expenses, such as advertising, to persuade people to purchase a good they have already chosen to supply, but that is not the same thing as saying that an act of supply necessarily creates demand for the good in question. This understanding of the law is obviously nonsensical as numerous business and product failures can attest to. If Say’s Law were true in this colloquial sense, then we could all get very rich just by producing whatever we wanted. https://fee.org/articles/understanding-says-law-of-markets/) theres nobody in the govt who understand macro-economics..

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram On Record Wholesale Inflation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npp1JLGf-k8 low base effect.. fuel & Powere rise is 37 % which has a cascading effect on all prices.. States are being asked to reduce taxes.. But since a larger portion of the taxes is imposed b the centre, the centre need to show the way by reducing which will then put pressure on the states to also follow suit.

to the question that reduce mobility of people during lockdown, the fuel hike will have limited impact? Chimdamabaram says the reduction is not uniform throughgout the country.

The entire burden is falling on the RBI whch is forced to keep its accomodative stance. Centre should contribute to the effort from the fiscal side.

MGNREGA: Wages Worth Over 65 Crore Remain Unpaid by the BJP-led MP Government https://gaurilankeshnews.com/mgnrega-wages-worth-over-65-crore-remain-unpaid-by-the-bjp-led-mp-government/ July 8, 2021 Many young workers including those who had come back to their native villages during the lockdown are migrating to cities such as Delhi, Maharashtra, and Indore in search of work. wages worth 65 crores and 86 lakhs still remain unpaid by the Madhya Pradesh government. The delay in payments violates the law that demands that the workers be paid their wages within 15 days after the date on which the work was completed. Furthermore, according to the 2018 Supreme Court order, in the case of any delay of wages, the workers must get compensation from the state.

 

https://www.gaonconnection.com/madhya-pradesh/65-crore-86-lakh-wages-of-mgnrega-workers-pending-in-madhya-pradesh-villagers-getting-away-from-the-scheme-49463   मध्य प्रदेश: मनरेगा श्रमिकों की 65 करोड़ 86 लाख रुपए की मजदूरी बकाया, योजना से दूर हो रहे ग्रामीण मनरेगा में समय पर भुगतान न होने से मध्य प्रदेश में मनरेगा मजदूर परेशान हैं। ग्रामीणों का कहना है कि कोरोना के चलते पहले ही आर्थिक संकट है, ऊपर से मजूदरी समय पर नहीं मिल रही है। Arun SinghArun Singh 5 July 2021

India's Public Domain Covid Data Is Embarrassing, It's Irresponsible Not to Share If More Exists' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzNMl6aXksQ  Dec 27, 2021

Bhramar Mukherjee, who is a Professor of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Global Public Health at the University of Michigan and has done extensive work on Covid-19 projections in India which has been internationally recognised, was asked if she was saying India does not have data on the number of people who have been re-infected after an original infection, the number who have experienced breakthrough infections after two vaccinations, and how many went on to be seriously ill, how many required hospitalization and, within that, what number needed oxygen, ICU handling and ventilators and Prof. Mukherjee bluntly said: “if such data exists it’s privileged”. She said it’s not available in the public domain.

Prof. Mukherjee also agreed that it’s simply a presumption that such data exists. The truth is we don’t know whether it exists at all. Certainly, it makes no sense for the government not to make it public and not to extensively cite and refer to it when announcing policies on boosters for different categories of people.

Prof. Mukherjee told The Wire India simply does not have data – or it has not been made public, which is bizarre – that would assess and establish the efficacy of the vaccinations it has given. We, therefore, also do not know which vaccination would make the best booster – another one of the same or a mix and match approach.