THE coronavirus attack has so far been much less deadly than the Spanish flu of a century ago. That had affected 500 million people worldwide, about 27 per cent of the world’s population of the time, and had a death rate of about 10 per cent among those affected. (Estimates of death vary greatly; this is a sort of mean). In India alone 17 million people are estimated by some to have died because of it. By contrast the coronavirus has affected, to date, less than two lakh people worldwide, and has a death rate of about three per cent among those affected.

CHANGES in estimation methods have of late made statistics on the Indian economy increasingly bewildering; besides, whenever the statistics show the performance of the economy in a poor light, the BJP government simply suppresses them. Nothing however can suppress the fact that the Indian economy is sliding into a serious state of stagnation. The third quarter (October-December) GDP estimates which have just been released show a 4.7 per cent growth over the corresponding quarter last year, which comes on the heels of a 4.5 per cent growth in the second quarter.

THOUGH finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman laboured for well over two hours when delivering her budget speech, it is likely that the aspect of the speech that will receive popular attention would be the restructuring of income tax slabs and reduction in rates that would benefit the tax paying middle class. That was obviously also the intention of the exercise.

THE budget figures these days mean very little. The difference between what the budget provides and what actually happens does not come to light even after a time-lag of two years, while earlier two years were the limit. And knowing this, the government provides figures in the budget which are extravagant and hence meaningless, but look pretty. What is remarkable about the 2020-21 budget however is that notwithstanding massive liberties taken with figures, this budget still has been so non-descript that hardly anyone outside of government has had a kind word to say about it.

WEALTH data are quite unreliable; and wealth distribution data even more so. Not much faith can be reposed on the absolute figures; but cross-country comparisons, and also movements in the shares of the top decile or percentile of the population over time in any country, are less likely to be affected by the infirmity of the absolute figures.