INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
For the country as a whole, per-capita income will probably decline 5.4% this fiscal year.India's richest states will see the biggest
declines in per capita income in the next year given that many of them are urbanized and were worst hit by the stringent lockdown
conditions, according to research by the State Bank of India.Eight of the wealthiest states and union territories will post double-digit
contractions in income in the fiscal year through March 2021, with Delhi the hardest hit, Soumya Kanti Ghosh, an economist at SBI, wrote in
The states constitute almost half of India's gross domestic product.States% Change in Per-Capita
IncomeDelhi-15.4Chandigarh-13.9Gujarat-11.6Tamil Nadu-11.4Telangana-11.1West Bengal-11.1Andaman - Nicobar
Islands-10.6Maharashtra-10.3India-5.4Source: SBI ResearchFor the country as a whole, per-capita income will probably decline 5.4% this
fiscal year, bigger than the estimated 3.8% drop in nominal GDP, resulting in an increase in income inequality, SBI said.India had the
world's largest lockdown to contain the Covid-19 pandemic
Major cities quickly became virus hotspots, and businesses, markets and shopping malls were all closed for several weeks, resulting in job
losses and sharp declines in income in those areas
Now, even as restrictions are slowly being eased across the country, customers are yet to return to stores.Less well-off states like Madhya
Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha will probably see per-capita income drop by less than 8%, according to SBI
This was mainly because of the larger number of green zones in those states -- where economic activity was allowed to resume -- prominence
of agriculture, and existing low levels of income in these areas.Ghosh said the government should provide a more aggressive policy response
to cushion the blow from the pandemic, adding that in past global financial crises, countries that were fiscally conservative took longer to
recover than others.(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is published from a
