View: Inequality will keep haunting Indian economy long after Covid goes away
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View: Inequality will keep haunting Indian economy long after Covid goes awayBy Duvvuri Subbarao, TOI Contributor
Last Updated: Jul 29, 2021, 10:22 AM IST
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Synopsis
Inequalities are morally wrong and politically corrosive. They are also bad economics. The huge consumption base of the bottom half of our population is our biggest growth driver. If they earn more, they will spend more, which will in turn spur more production, more jobs and higher growth.
A long queue for food. Last year, 75 million Indians retreated into poverty.
When Covid goes away, hopefully soon enough, it will leave behind a more unequal world. This is contrary to historical experience because pandemics, as Thomas Piketty notes in his widely acclaimed book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, have been great levellers.
BBC News
By Soutik Biswas
image captionOver 90% of couples live with the husband s family after marriage in India
Dowry payments in India s villages have been largely stable over the past few decades, a World Bank study has found.
Researchers looked at 40,000 marriages that took place in rural India between 1960 and 2008.
They found that dowry was paid in 95% of the marriages even though it s been illegal in India since 1961.
The practice, often described as a social evil, continues to thrive and leaves women vulnerable to domestic violence and even death.
Paying and accepting dowry is a centuries-old tradition in South Asia where the bride s parents gift cash, clothes and jewellery to the groom s family.
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