INDIA’S trade deficit has increased in the recent months with double digit growths in both exports and imports. The trade deficit was a result of imports growing at a faster pace than that of exports. The year on year growth of exports and imports in March 2022 was roughly 20 per cent and 24 per cent respectively leading to a widening trade deficit. This is primarily because of rise in the import bills due to increase in international prices of petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL) and also of non-oil and non-gold and silver imports such as commodities and metals.

One of the major reasons of rising income inequality in both developed and developing countries in the globalized economy is the widening wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers in different sectors. It is often attributed to increase in demand for skilled workers particularly on account of rise in the use of technology in the production process.

ECONOMIC indicators once again are flashing worrying signals. The unemployment rate in India at the moment is above 8 per cent, the consumer price index (combined) taken as a measure of headline inflation is above 6 per cent and the wholesale price index showing year-on-year growth is close to 13 per cent as of January 2022.

ONCE again it is clear by emerging trends in employment, that wages and returns to labour and the conditions of employment are determined in capitalism not by any moral judgment of nutritional necessity or by any universal norm derived from a metaphysical notion of ‘humanity’, but purely conditioned by the relative bargaining power of contesting classes.The current pandemic has an extensive impact on human life at large with the virus mutating continuously and infecting human bodies escaping the shields of various preventive measures including vaccines.

WORLD Inequality Report 2022 underlines the sharp divide between the rich and the poor that occurred as a result of neoliberal policies pursued by global capital using the hegemonic and asymmetric architecture of global institutions. The report clearly shows how the class divide has become relatively more important than the regional divide in determining global inequality. This simply tells that in today’s world where one is born and brought up has relatively less impact than in which class the person belongs to in explaining relative earnings and wealth status.