YK MYK CONG HAS TO FIND NEW NARRATIVE TO ATTRACT YOUTH AND MASSES OPINION RANCHI MONDAY, 1 FEB, 2021 PG-12, YEAR—10, ISSUE—267 (RNI NO: JHAENG / 2012 / 44137) MAX 21 C MIN 07 C Sky will be clear. AT A GLANCE CINEMA HALLS TO OPERATE AT FULL OCCUPANCY FROM FEB 1: JAVADEKAR NEW DELHI: The movie theatre business which was severely hit due to the coronavirus pandemic is expected to be back on track now as theatres have been approved to operate at full capacity across the country. Cinema halls would operate as usual on 100 per cent seats from February 1. Following the approval from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Union Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry has also released guidelines regarding operating of cinema halls on Sunday. Theatres, however, must strictly follow the Covid19 protocols during this time. PG 7 WORLD Morning India Rs. 5 WEATHER TODAY CHINA DEPLOYED ME TO CRUSH BALOCH MOVEMENT: PAK GEN ‘India's vaccination drive faster than any country’ NEW DELHI: As India's Covid inoculation drive completes 15 days, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said the programme is "faster than anywhere in the world" and India in the process has left the US as well as the UK far behind in the exercise. Mentioning that the beginning of this year marks the completion of almost one year of our battle against coronavirus and that India's fight against the pandemic became an example, the Prime Minister said our vaccination programme too is turning out to be exemplary for the world. "Today, India is under- taking the world's biggest Covid vaccine programme. Do you know what's a matter of more pride? Along with the biggest vaccine programme, we are vaccinating our citizens faster than anywhere in the world," Modi said while addressing the country in his first 'Mann Ki Baat' radio programme of this year. "In just 15 days, India has vaccinated over 30 lakh Corona Warriors, whereas an advanced country such as US took 18 days to get the same done; Britain 36 days!" The Prime Minister further said the Made-in-India vaccine is, of course, a symbol of India's self-reliance and a symbol of her self-pride. Citing appreciation received on the vaccination drive, Modi said many Indians have written mes- E-CATERING SERVICES AT 62 STATIONS RESUNE FROM TODAY sages on 'NamoApp' that the vaccine has generated a new self-confidence. "These days," he said, "I too receive similar messages for India from Presidents and Prime Ministers of different countries." "You must also have seen recently how the President of Brazil, thanked India in a tweet...." He also lauded India's efforts in providing the Serum Institute of India's Covishield vaccine and Bharat Biotech's Covaxin to a number of foreign countries, including the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Nepal. NEW DELHI: After nearly a year-long suspension due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) will resume e-catering services at 62 stations from Monday. "IRCTC is going to resume ecatering services at 62 stations in the first phase from February 1, the second phase of resumption will take place most probably after three weeks," an IRCTC official told ANI. New Delhi, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Howrah, Surat, Vijayawada, Patna, Ujjain, Panvel are amongst major stations where e-catering services will be resumed in the initial leg. Railways had suspended the service due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and consequent unprecedented lockdown, on March 22, 2020. Railways had earlier said IRCTC is ensuring that all its ecatering partners ensure proper health and hygiene protocols while serving the meals to the passengers. MORE ON PG 7 SOURAV GANGULY DISCHARGED FROM HOSPITAL KOLKATA: Former India captain and current BCCI president Sourav Ganguly was on Sunday discharged from the Apollo Gleneagles Hospital after undergoing a second round of angioplasty. According to hospital sources, Ganguly is currently doing fine. The BCCI president has been advised to be on medication and follow a strict routine for the next few months. Ganguly was rushed to the hospital on Wednesday after he complained of uneasiness and chest pain. He had complained of chest pain on Tuesday night and as he continued to feel unwell even on Wednesday morning, his family members decided to shift him to the hospital. CORONA METER INDIA TOTAL CASES: 1,07,47,661 TOTAL DEATH: 154,318 WORLD TOTAL CASES: 103,222,869 TOTAL DEATH: 2,231,285 SPOTLIGHT & ISSUES Girls taking part in a cultural programmes at Women’s College in Ranchi on Sunday. Hemant Sutradhar CMYK 08 SPOTLIGHT & www.sanmarglive.com Morning India ISSUES MONDAY, RANCHI, FEBRUARY 1, 2021 GYAN PATHAK INDIA’S HEAL THCARE POLICY Singhu border turns impregnable fortress after fresh violence NEW DELHI: The Singhu border in Delhi, one of the major sites of the ongoing farmers' agitation, resembled an impregnable fortress on Sunday with a massive presence of security personnel. The heavy security deployment has come in the backdrop of violent clashes between locals and protesting farmers on Friday in which several people, including a police officer, were left injured. Even as the farmers are camping along the borders of Delhi -- at Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur, demanding repeal of the Centre's newly-passed farm laws for over two months, the scenario has changed drastically in the last few days. After Friday's violence, several restrictive measures have been introduced. The general public is no more allowed to come close to the protest sites. The vehicles are being diverted by the police around 1-2 kms from the protest site at Singhu border. Earlier, the diversion happened about Rakesh Tikait with Punjabi singers Kanwar Grewal and Harf Cheema in Delhi on Sunday. ANI 400 metres from the protest site. Delhi Police, along with paramilitary forces and ITBP personnel have been deployed at the border exit point. Besides, people can now move towards Haryana from Delhi only through the routes designated by the police. Identity is being checked at around 10 places on the border areas, apart from routine questioning by the police at the barricaded points. Drones have also been pressed into service in the area and at the same time, videography is also being done by the police. The overall situation on Singhu border has changed after the January 26 violence during the farmers' tractor rally, and more so after the clash on Friday, and the blast near the Israeli Embassy. Now police are maintaining a strict vigil. Also, internet services have been temporarily snapped along the border areas as a preventive measure against rumours and misinformation. BEYOND PANDEMICS PANEL RAISES QUESTION OVER CIL ARM HIRING EQUIPMENT FOR RS 859 CR NEW DELHI: Unhappy over Coal India arm Central Coalfields Ltd (CCL) in Jharkhand hiring machinery worth Rs 859 crore in a year, a parliamentary panel has sought reasons behind such a move when its own equipment were not utilised fully. The 22-member panel headed by BJP MP Meenakashi Lekhi while tabling its latest report on public undertakings has also suggested that CCL may offer its machinery on hire if not used for fetching revenue. CCL spent Rs 859 crore on hiring of plant and equipment during 2018-19 while no independent study was undertaken to assess the comparative cost effectiveness in hiring of (heavy earth moving machinery) HEMMs or owning these equipment, the panel said. A woman wearing protective mask walk past wall graffiti to spread awareness about the corona virus, in Mumbai. ANI File ABINASH DAS ccessibility, affordability and accountability of the healthcare system of India are essential for better health and wellbeing of its people. Health directly affects domestic economic growth by improving labour productivity and reducing economic burden of illnesses. Barro (1996) found that increasing life expectancy from 50 to 70 years (a 40 per cent increase) could raise the economic growth rate by 1.4 percentage points per year. India’ s healthcare system, though has shown some improvement, is marred with poor health outcomes; low access and utilization; high out-of-pocket health expenditure; inequity in availability of healthcare; lower budget allocation for healthcare; low human resource for health; unregulated private enterprise in an industry marked by high level of market failure; and poor quality of health care (Ch. 5, Economic Survey, 2020-21). Both the supply and demand side factors of healthcare needs urgent attention. The supply side of the health sector in terms of physical infrastructure and human resource needs to be scaled up significantly. The National Health mission (NHM) has played a critical role in mitigating inequity in healthcare access, therefore, its budget needs to be increased substantially. NHM coupled with Health and Wellness Centre (HWC) under the Ayushman Bharat can bridge the gap of unequal healthcare access. Cross-country data from global health expenditure shows that at low levels of public health expenditure; an increase in public health expenditure sharply reduces the Out-Of-Pocket (OOP) expenditure as a share of total health expenditure. It is estimated that an increase in public health expenditure from the current levels in India to 3% of GDP can reduce the OOP expenditure from above 60% currently to about 30%. Majority of healthcare in India is provided by the private sector, as such, it is critical for policymakers to mitigate information asymmetry in healthcare. Asymmetric information creates market failures leaving the unregulated private healthcare sector at sub-optimal level. Therefore, information utilities that help mitigate the information asymmetry can be very useful in enhancing overall welfare. Addressing this information asymmetry can help lower premiums, enable the offering of better products and help increase the insurance penetration in the country. A The impressive growth of telemedicine in India during the pandemic is evident as the eSanjeevaniOPD (a patientto-doctor tele-consultation system) has recorded almost a million consultations since its launch in April 2020. As telemedicine consultations correlates strongly with the internet penetration in a state, more internet access will increase usage of telemedicine and reduce geographic disparities in healthcare utilization. The COVID-19 pandemic is yet another reminder of havoc that communicable diseases can create, but the risk posed by non-communicable diseases (NCDs) cannot be undermined either. The NCDs constitute 71 per cent of global deaths and about 65 per cent of deaths in India are caused by non-communicable diseases (NCDs). NCDs, though partially, is related to lifestyle choices that can be controlled by encouraging people to adopt health lifestyle through behavioural nudges. The future of healthcare lies in our ability to provide access to quality healthcare to all. India’ s healthcare policy must continue to focus on long-term healthcare priorities despite the setback from the pandemic. Both demand and supply side constraints in the healthcare sector need tobe addressed. Firstly, effective handling of communicable disease by building adequately trained health emergency response teams and setting up dedicated control rooms at district level. Secondly, controlling rising NCD prevalence in India, partially through awareness campaigns on healthy lifestyle. Thirdly, strengthening the primary healthcare facilities with adequate human resource and equipment. Fourthly, providing universal health coverage and extensive promotion and utilisation of Ayushman Bharat’s PMJAY and health and wellness centres. Sixthly, a standardised system for quality reporting on healthcare for hospitals, physicians and insurance companies is a must to benchmark such services. Last but not the least, to root out quacks’ ‘ from the system and tackle information asymmetry in the healthcare sector, regulation and supervision of the healthcare sector need to brought in with more vigour, such as an independent sectoral regulator (Ch. 5, Economic Survey, 2020-21). (The author is Joint Director, Dept of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance) W hen crores of people are without jobs, economy is suffering from twin crisis of demand and supply, reviving the MSMEs and opening up doors to create new ones, make sense. Budget 2021-22 must do that, since all the MSMEs were shut down with lockdown orders on March 24, 2020 rendering the crores of employed persons jobless. Millions of MSMEs are now not viable, could not reopen despite unlocking of the economy since June 1, 2020 and has very little chance to survive. Initiatives taken seem to be failing in their very purpose mainly because they are not found to be compatible with the present need. Even the viable units are facing insurmountable hurdles in their way to financial access. The unprecedented disruption cause by the corona virus pandemic at the time when MSMEs in India were already suffering from the after-effect of demonetization order of November 2016 and hurriedly implemented GST on July 1, 2017, has delivered mortal blow to millions of units. It is very difficult to say how much units are still surviving out of 633.88 lakhs units as per NSS 73rd round (2015-16), since the Annual Report of the Union Ministry of MSME 2019-20 does not provide the latest record, while the MSMEs dashboard for the current status shows that there are only about 94 lakh MSMEs registered with Udyog Aadhar. Under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat programme the definition of the MSMEs were changed with effect from July 1, 2020. The new definition has merged the two categories manufacturing and services - into one. Micro enterprises are now those which have investment in plant and machinery or equipment not more than Rs 1 crore with annual turnover not more than Rs 5 crore. The amounts for small enterprises are Rs 10 crore and Rs 50 crore respectively, and for medium enterprises these are Rs 50 crore and Rs 250 crore. The definition was changed under covid support package to give benefit to the enterprises which were not included under earlier definition of medium enterprises for both the categories. In earlier definition medium manufacturing enterprises were those having investment in plant and machinery between Rs 5-10 crore, and for service sector between Rs 2-5 crore. The new definition seriously impacted the financial access to all the enterprises having investment of less than Rs 10 crore in manufacturing and Rs 5 crore in services. The major benefit of the relief package of Rs 3 lakh crore to MSMEs went to newly included bigger companies rather than previously operating companies. It proved to be number game that showed the Union government was doing great things for MSMEs. The fact is entirely different, because Emergency Credit Guarantee Scheme is not working smoothly. Though the scheme was launched as a key stimulus for firms battered by lockdown restrictions, loans to struggling MSMEs are painfully slowed down. Only around Rs 19,000 crore of fresh loans were sanctioned under the scheme to businesses and MSMEs in October and November 2020. As of December 4, a total of only 2.05 lakh crore were sanctioned, but only 1.58 lakh crore were disbursed to 40.49 lakh borrowers out of which 13.40 lakh were given loan in the last two months after a great hue and cry. It may not be out of place to mention that loans were sanctioned to 80.93 lakh borrowers while 1.39 crore are eligible for such a loan. Government of India expects that 45 lakh units will resume business activities and safeguard jobs. It reflects the sorry state of affair. Since most of the MSMEs continue to be denied access BUDGET MUST MAKE SENSE FOR MSMES { { THE UNPRECEDENTED DISRUPTION CAUSE BY THE CORONA VIRUS PANDEMIC AT THE TIME WHEN MSMES IN INDIA WERE ALREADY SUFFERING FROM THE AFTER-EFFECT OF DEMONETIZATION ORDER OF NOVEMBER 2016 AND HURRIEDLY IMPLEMENTED GST ON JULY 1, 2017, HAS DELIVERED MORTAL BLOW TO MILLIONS OF UNITS. IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO SAY HOW MUCH UNITS ARE STILL SURVIVING OUT OF 633.88 LAKHS UNITS AS PER NSS 73RD ROUND (201516), SINCE THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE UNION MINISTRY OF MSME 2019-20 DOES NOT PROVIDE THE LATEST RECORD, WHILE THE MSMES DASHBOARD FOR THE CURRENT STATUS SHOWS THAT THERE ARE ONLY ABOUT 94 LAKH MSMES REGISTERED WITH UDYOG AADHAR. to the relief package in particular and access to credit in general, budget 2021-22 must address the problem with speed. Provisions should be made for MSME borrowers to directly apply to Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for MSMEs. Apart from access to finance, this sector is facing a variety of problems. One of them is lack of skilled worker at present, who have left for their home and are yet to return. Where there are units, there are no skilled workers, and where there are skilled workers, there are no units. It is a complex problem, and government must target two things in the budget. New MSMEs will have to be opened in large numbers in the areas where there are skilled persons available to work. Secondly, the government must try to do something so that the workforce that left their usual working place could return to their work. It is here the government should shed its narrow mindedness. The recent labour laws does are against our workforce, which are limbs of the industries to produced and to server. How can a person be made strong by weakening the limbs on which the very movement depends? The workforce must have charm left in their works and should not be made exploitative. The tendency to automate MSMEs to deal with shortages of labour force should be discouraged in the present scenario of large scale joblessness, at least for now. The priority should be to mitigate the impact of the pandemic, and everything else should follow after that. Apart from migration of labour force, the other problems the sector is facing are the demand and supply chain disruption, cancellation of export orders, raw material shortage, etc. However, there is no respite from tax on MSMEs. There are already demands for reducing GST for the sector, and the government must do something for this. Delayed payment to MSMEs is another major problem that cripples the growth of this sector. The government should assure that they get payments in time. There must be a redressal mechanism is place that can timely deliver. The Ministry of MSME has assured that they will come with a law to ensure that all MSMEs receivable should be paid within 45 days, but it is yet to see the light of the day. The situation thus demands a fresh look at the ground level, doing away with narrow minded approach towards the various limbs of the MSMEs including the GST, labour laws, financial access, and incentives. It must be done on priority basis because MSMEs are the largest employers in the country after agriculture. This labour intensive sector was employing 114 million person, contributing about 30 per cent in India's GDP, and approximately 50 per cent of our exports come from goods and services within this sector. Time has come to speed up and strengthen all ongoing schemes by providing sufficient fund and strengthened mechanism in place. Indian economy and the possible trinity of resilience TULSIPRIYA RAJKUMARI SANJANA KADYAN F ty of COVID-19 induced twin demand and supply shock revealed startling levels of socioeconomic vulnerabilities across sectors of the economy and geographies. While non-essential sectors predominantly catering to discretionary consumption bore the unpreventable brunt of a full throttle output shock, essential ones like agriculture underwent a dampened shock primarily emanating from the indirect impact of rom a phoenix burnt to ashes rises another, renewed and reborn. 2020 has been the year of the phoenix for India, a year of deep suffering brought by an unexampled pandemic, a year that locked humanity’s mental energies into a firespiral of uncertainty and despair but also a year that unlocked new levers of human resolve and economic resilience.The spread and intensi- restricted activities in non-essential sectors. As demonstrated in Economic Survey 2020-21, disruptions in domestic and global supply chains triggered a supply shock of import-intensive agriculture inputs like fertilizers and pesticides, as also agricultural exports like rice, poultry products and spices. Spiralling and broad based food inflation witnessed in the first quarter of FY21 was, hence, inescapable. However, timely and proactive exemptions from COVID-19 induced restrictions provided by Government of India facilitated uninterrupted cropping activities and largely insulated agriculture. Manufacturing sector endured a ubiquitous demand and supply shock penetrating almost all sub sectors including textiles and fabrics, consumer goods, computer hardware, machinery and equipment. However, a surge in health services boosted the pharmaceuticals sector, exemplifying the case of heightened opportunity in a crisis situation. Construction and contact intensive services sector, particularly trade, tourism and transport were afflicted the most due to the pandemic induced requirements of social distancing. Suppressed demand in down- stream industries like cement and steel had a debilitating effect on mining operations despite being exempted from lockdown restrictions. The geographical spread of the pandemic induced shock in India was intertwined with the preexisting economic vulnerabilities of the states. The Economic Survey 2020-21 attempts to interpret this vulnerability as a combination of Gross Value Added (GVA) shock and labour shock. The highest output contributing state and the COVID-19 epicentre of the country i.e. Maharashtra grappled with contact-sensitive services sector shock and labour market stresses with 56 per cent of its output coming from the services and 7.5 per cent of the country’s Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) located in the state. While Tamil Nadu and Kerala were relatively more exposed to the construction sector shock, a manufacturing slowdown lent risks to economic recovery in Gujarat and Jammu & Kashmir. Punjab, though sheltered by the relatively resilient agricultural sector, experienced severe labour shocks with 62 per cent of its non-agricultural sector being informal. Services led informal sector shocks also made states like Delhi and Telangana vulnera- ble. The ubiquity of construction led informal sector shocks was most severely felt in the UP. While the full impact of the pandemic on the India economy is still unravelling, the economy has gained macro-resilience at three levels. Firstly, instantaneous resilience to limit immediate damage was imparted by timely and pro-active support of Government of India to vulnerable households and businesses. Secondly, calibrated fiscal and monetary policypivoting offered dynamic resilience to sectors to adapt to new challenges and recover. The third and the most important of all is the health system resilience that Centre, State and local Governments built in response to the pandemic, a critical growth engine for the fledgling flight of the new-born phoenix. At the core of this trinity of resilience lies an irrepressible human spirit that strives to find its way back to wholeness! CMYK PAGE 8 Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and MoS Finance Anurag Thakur in a group photo with the team members working on Union Budget 202122 at North Block, in New Delhi on Sunday. ANI ‘First part of budget session to end on Feb 13’ NEW DELHI: The first part of the Budget Session of Parliament will end on February 13 instead of February 15 as the Rajya Sabha, on Sunday, decided to change its sitting, sources said. Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu also made a fervent appeal to the leaders of various parties at an allparty meeting to ensure smooth and effective functioning of the House during the Budget Session. Leaders of various parties attending the meeting assured that there would be full participation in all the debates and discussions in the House, the sources add. It was also decided that the Rajya Sabha would sit on February 13 instead of the scheduled sitting on February 15, as the last of the first part of the Budget Session, the sources said after the meeting. The house will adjourn to enable the Department Related Parliamentary Committees to examine the Demands for Grants of various departments and ministries, and will meet again on March 8. A number of ministers and around 25 leaders of various parties attended the allparty meeting. The leaders sought more time for the debate on the Motion of Thanks to the President's address and the General Budget, to which Naidu asked Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prahlad Joshi and the others concerned to rework the time schedule. The chairman observed that these two discussions offer ample opportunities to the members to reflect on a wide range of issues for which more time may be allocated. He also urged the ministers to learn the art of speaking in brief, both while moving the bills for consideration and replying to debates, so that members get more time to speak. The allocation of sufficient time for members of small parties and groups in the House was also discussed, with the chairman observing that efforts were being made to give reasonable amount of time for such members. He, however, noted that it may not be possible for members of about 20 such parties to speak on every issue. MORE ON PG 5 IAF will focus on Rs 1.3 lakh crore deal for 114 fighter jets NEW DELHI: With the deal for 83 LCA Tejas Mark 1A aircraft set to be signed during upcoming Aero India, the Indian Air Force is now looking to focus on the multirole fighter aircraft project under which it is planning to acquire 114 combat aircraft expected to cost over Rs 1.3 lakh crore. The Air Force had been undertaking one fighter aircraft project at a time and now its 83 LCA Mark 1A fighters have been cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Security led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Rs 50,000 crore deal is set to be signed in Bengaluru during Aero India. "The 83 LCA Tejas would be replacing the four squadrons of the MiG-21 fighter jets which are set to be phased out in near future. The focus would now be on the 114 fighter jets project," government sources told ANI. The IAF has already issued the Request for Information for the tender and would be soon moving a proposal for getting the Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) before the Defence Ministry for the multi-billion dollar project which would enable it to acquire 4.5 plus generation aircraft in large numbers to match the capabilities of the omni role Rafale fighters 36 of which have started getting inducted from last year. Most Indians facing difficulty in managing their expenses NEW DELHI: A majority of Indians are finding it difficult to manage their expenses, showed an IANS-CVoter pre-budget survey. Around 65.8 per cent respondents in the survey said that current expenses have become difficult to manage, while 30 per cent people said that although expenses have gone up, they are in manageable limits. A miniscule 2.1 per cent of the respondents said that their expenses have gone down in the past one year and another 2.1 per cent could not respond on the matter. The survey also showed that with a massive impact of the pan- demic on businesses and people's earnings, purchasing power of most Indians weakened in the past one year. Along with the impact on the earnings of the common man, what also affected the people are the high commodity prices, including that of food. For most of 2020, inflation remained at elevated levels, on the back of high food and fuel prices. It is because of inflationary concerns that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) too has kept the lending rates intact after sharp cuts during the initial phase of the pandemic. The survey also showed that over 70 per cent people felt the adverse impact of high commodity prices in the past one year. The sample size of the poll is 4,000 plus and the fieldwork for the survey was done in thirdfourth week of January 2021. The theme of the survey is "Expectations from the Union Budget". Almost three fourths feel that after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, inflation has been unchecked and prices have gone up, as per the IANS-CVoter Budget Tracker. At 72.1, this is the highest percentage in PM Modi's tenure who feel this way compared to a low of 17.1 per cent in 2015. In 2020, only 10.8 per cent of AROUND 65.8 PER CENT RESPONDENTS IN THE SURVEY SAID THAT CURRENT EXPENSES HAVE BECOME DIFFICULT TO MANAGE, WHILE 30 PER CENT PEOPLE SAID THAT ALTHOUGH EXPENSES HAVE GONE UP, THEY ARE IN MANAGEABLE LIMITS. the respondents said that prices have gone down while 12.8 per cent said nothing has changed. The sample size of the poll is 4,000 plus and the fieldwork for the survey was done in thirdfourth week of January 2021. The theme of the survey is "Expectations from the Union Budget". To a question in the sur- vey, 72.1 per cent respondents said after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, inflation has been unchecked and prices have gone up. This is the worst score for the Modi government on the inflation front since 2015. In 2015, the comparative figure was only 17.1 per cent, in 2016 it was 27.3 per cent, 36.8 per cent in 2017, 56.4 per cent in 2018 and 48.8 per cent in 2019. The survey reflects the growing worries on the economic front in a Covid hit year, on the eve of the Union Budget on Monday. The economy has contracted this year and unemployment and dwindling incomes have become a source of concern for policy makers.