Ripple effect of pandemic; more people under debt
The Coronavirus pandemic has now pushed more people into the old problems of debt and poverty in rural as well as urban areas of India. But due to lower-income rates in rural, debt has worsened the condition of countryside people. We saw how a series of lockdowns and shutdowns have thrown millions of people out of jobs in cities and forced them to go back to their villages, that shattered Indian economy.
The wire took interviews with 75 households in a group of eight villages in Uttar Pradesh. The result showed household incomes have sunk nearly 75% on average and almost two-thirds of the households have taken on debt.
Asha Devi, a 35-year-old laborer, had to mortgage her land for a Rs 20,000 loan and as the money runs out, she has stopped buying milk, halved her use of cooking oil and can afford lentils only once every ten days. “Sometimes I go to sleep hungry. Last week, I think I went to bed hungry at least twice,” Devi told Reuters as she wiped away tears with her threadbare sari outside her mud house in her village in Uttar Pradesh state.
PM Narendra Modi has promised free food grains for the poor but the rations are limited and not enough for the family, Devi added. Due to increased tax on fuels, the price of everything from biscuits, tea, and lentils to auto parts has taken a hit. This has a knock-on effect on borrowing of money, it has risen by three times since the pandemic hit in March 2020
Some shopkeepers have shut down shops, that their families have run for generations because the wholesalers have stopped giving on credit. And the goods they had already have been sold on credit to people, that money isn’t likely to come back.
