It has been estimated that in 2019, the imputed value of this unpaid reproductive work by women was equivalent of $10.9 trillion, which is more than the earnings of the top 50 firms in the world in 2018 (Wezerek and Ghodsee 2020). The monetary imputation is useful to understand the sheer magnitude of unpaid work.

Overall, we have found that supply chains in India disrupted in the aftermath of the first lockdown have since recovered somewhat. However, they continue to be disrupted in the case of perishables.

The conclusion is that the government is keen on signalling fiscal prudence by sticking as far as possible to the deficit in the budget announced. We can now see that behind the finance ministry’s announcement last week that it is raising the public borrowing limit for the financial year is the reality that the government’s revenues are set to fall behind its expenditure, and not any preparation for the stimulus to come.

I see a huge scope for this data and we need to find out ways to be able to make use of it for making intelligent policy decisions and see where the economy is going. Because that data is available to us everyday, be it data from job portal, banking or retail.

For the moment, the government should seriously consider the money financing route as funding the deficit will raise interest rates. An objection encountered is that the former is inevitably inflationary. Actually, it is not more so than monetary easing implemented by the central bank.