How the accumulation of debt during the Covid-19 pandemic is hurting India’s low-income households
Household-debt-to-GDP ratio increased to 37.1% in the second quarter of 2020, The debt levels of daily wage workers around the country have increased, surveys show. | Punit Paranjpe/ AFP
Six years ago, 24-year-old Munna Kumar Singh and his family migrated to Delhi from a small town in Bihar, where he worked in a denim factory in the city’s Udyog Vihar for a monthly salary of Rs 9,000. He is the sole breadwinner in the family of four. He also tries to send a small remittance to those at home in Bihar. When he lost his job with last year’s lockdown to curtain the spread of Covid-19, Singh struggled to make ends meet. He ended up borrowing extensively from informal channels. He is now over Rs 50,000 in debt with no stable income to repay his loans.