The government’s efforts to jumpstart the economy with stimuli may give short-term results, but it is just the beginning of the long road to recovery
The sun sears down as Vijay Singh surveys the bleak horizon. The past few days have been hot, a sharp contrast to the rains that inundated his farmland in Aneegarhi in western Uttar Pradesh just a week ago. The inconsistency of the weather, however, is just one of his many worries. “Things are just getting increasingly troublesome,” said Singh, who took up farming potatoes and wheat ten years ago. “The output is bad if the weather plays truant, and when the output is good, the market prices fall.”
And it is not just him. “The whole village is in trouble,” he said. “Some are selling their land to pay off their debts.” Singh, 35, is now planning to give up farming and move to a city to make a living, perhaps to Delhi NCR for an office job.
Jageshwar Sharma may not advise that, though. Son of a farmer from a village near Kanpur, Sharma, 22, moved a year ago to take up an assembly-line job through a contractor at a Samsung plant in Greater Noida. At the first whiff of a sales decline this summer, he lost his job. “A thousand of us were fired,” he said. “Being young and educated, I managed to find another job after a few months. But it has been tough for many others to get back on their feet.”
Cut across to Mumbai, you may think investment adviser Aarti Malhotra Chawla’s life is a world apart, but you will be surprised. “The chips are down, with unreasonable regulations and pressure from the government,” she said. “The wealth industry is taking home less and less each year. People are losing their jobs. They have loans to pay, children to bring up. There is a lot of pain on the street.”
HOW BAD IS IT?
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 08, 2019 من THE WEEK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 08, 2019 من THE WEEK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Angry, Young America
Campus protests against the Gaza war continue to linger as students demand a realignment of US ties with Israel
We need to engage more with communities
Designer Aratrik Dev Varman of the label Tilla has long been a lover of history. One could comfortably call him part-aesthete, part-archeologist, for his clothes dip into vintage styles of the Kutch, Sindh, Balochistan and Afghanistan, bringing alive antique styles and crafts. Tilla, the store and atelier, are situated on a tree-lined avenue in Ahmedabad.
The great luxury slowdown
A year or so ago, if anyone had told me that Tommy Hilfiger would have stolen the show at New York’s Met Gala, I would have laughed. But it seems the end of giant luxury labels is upon us even before we expected it. The American ready-to-wear designer Tommy Hilfiger seems to have created the maximum media buzz at the 2024 Met Gala, according to several data analytics firms.
RAP BRINGS RAPTURE
How indie artistes, especially hip-hoppers, are driving the phenomenal rise of Malayalam music
Employability issues are a narrative created by the corporate world
Prof Yogesh Singh is the 23rd vice chancellor of the century-old University of Delhi (DU). An engineer with a PhD in computer engineering, Singh has an impressive track record of teaching, innovation and research in the area of software engineering. He has more than 250 publications and his book, Software Testing, published by the Cambridge University Press, is well-received internationally. In an interview with THE WEEK, Singh talks about trends in higher education in India, the challenges faced by big universities, and how to make higher education more interesting. Asked about the perception that Indian graduates are “not employable”, he reacts strongly, and emphasises the difference between training and higher education. Edited excerpts:
SERVING WITH DISTINCTION
Conceived as a university like no other, Jawaharlal Nehru University became India's best. Here is how
Mandela Effect and Liar's Dividend
The complex tapestry of AI's impact on society
The other Sabyasachi
I am Sabyasachi Mukherjee, not to be confused with my namesake, the celebrated fashion couturier, declared the venerated director-general of Mumbai’s pride, George Wittet’s Indo-Saracenic jewel, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, formerly known as the Prince of Wales Museum.
THE MANGO HUNTERS
'Naadan Maavukal' started out as a Facebook group, but what it does offline has helped conserve many indigenous varieties of mangoes
BJP LEADERS, TOO, HAVE HAD ENOUGH
Farmers’ protest has taken the centre stage in Haryana, which goes to the polls on May 25. Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda is confident that the Congress, which has been out of power for 10 years, will regain its hold on the state. “People who voted for the BJP are disappointed today. It is clear that they want change,” he told THE WEEK.
