Severity of the COVID-19 pandemic in India.

The main objective of this study is to identify the socioeconomic, meteorological, and geographical factors associated with the severity of COVID-19 pandemic in India. The severity is measured by the cumulative severity ratio (CSR)-the ratio of the cumulative COVID-related deaths to the deaths in a pre-pandemic year-its first difference and COVID infection cases. We have found significant interstate heterogeneity in the pandemic development and have contrasted the trends of the COVID-19 severities between Maharashtra, which had the largest number of COVID deaths and cases, and the other states. Drawing upon random-effects models and Tobit models for the weekly and monthly panel data sets of 32 states/union territories, we have found that the factors associated with the COVID severity include income, gender, multi-morbidity, urbanization, lockdown and unlock phases, weather including temperature and rainfall, and the retail price of wheat. Brief observations from a policy perspective are made toward the end.

On hunger and child mortality in India.

Despite accelerated growth there is pervasive hunger, child undernutrition and mortality in India. Our analysis focuses on their determinants. Raising living standards alone will not reduce hunger and undernutrition. Reduction of rural/urban disparities, income inequality, consumer price stabilization, and mothers' literacy all have roles of varying importance in different nutrition indicators. Somewhat surprisingly, public distribution system (PDS) do not have a significant effect on any of them. Generally, child undernutrition and mortality rise with poverty. Our analysis confirms that media exposure triggers public action, and helps avert child undernutrition and mortality. Drastic reduction of economic inequality is in fact key to averting child mortality, conditional upon a drastic reordering of social and economic arrangements.

National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, poverty and prices in rural India.

The objective of this analysis is mainly to construct an intuitive measure of the performance of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in India. The focus is on divergence between demand and supply at the district level. Some related issues addressed are: (i) whether the gap between demand and supply responds to poverty; and (ii) whether recent hikes in NREGS wages are inflationary. Our analysis confirms responsiveness of the positive gap between demand and supply to poverty. Also, apprehensions expressed about the inflationary potential of recent hikes in NREGS wages have been confirmed. More importantly, higher NREGS wages are likely to undermine self-selection of the poor in it.