 you're watching NewsClick and this is our year-end special. I am Anand Dev Chakravarti and we'll be focusing on the economy in this year's render. Well, 2020, a nightmare of a year, probably the worst year we've had in this entire millennium, will be remembered for the coronavirus. And just when we thought we'd pushed it away, what did we see? It's come back with a new hat, with a mutation. We'll have to wait and see what happens in 2021. But this was also the worst year for India's economy, perhaps the worst year since we became independent. And today we're going to do a quick recap of the top five reasons why this was so terrible for India's economy. Reason number one, disaster number one, if I have to say that, is the GDP, which is the total income that the entire country has, all of us together, the everything that we've produced, goods and services and everything that we've earned. This is the first time since 1979, in 41 years, that we are going to see the GDP contract. In 1979, it happened because oil prices shot through the roof and there was a severe drought in India. And in those days, we were largely in agricultural economy. So there was a contraction. In 2020, what has happened? This is the worst contraction we are seeing. And mostly because of the COVID lockdown, we are likely to go down by 7.5% in 2020 compared to 2019. So our GDP, instead of growing, is going to go down. And you can blame the coronavirus for it, but things were already bad for the last several quarters for India's economy. Think about it, 2019 itself had a very dismal GDP growth rate, just 4.9%, not even 5%. And if you look at the first quarter, which was well before the coronavirus hit us, the first quarter of 2020, which is January to March, our growth was a dismal 3.1%. So just don't blame the coronavirus and the COVID lockdown for what has happened this year. It is likely that we would have had a very, very bad economic year this year as well. Disaster number two, that is factory output or manufacturing. This has been a terrible year for manufacturing. And again, most of it is because of the lockdown caused by COVID-19. But don't blame the coronavirus alone because even before that, for three successive quarters, which means from July 2019 to March 2020, before the COVID lockdown started, we have had three successive quarters of negative growth in manufacturing, which is that manufacturing has been going down. So part of the reason was bad policies, economic policies of the Modi government. First you had demonetization, then badly implemented GST, a bad GST architecture, and finally now a poorly planned, poorly implemented lockdown across India. So what is happening? Manufacturing is likely to see a huge decline this year. But as I said, it has been happening for some time already. And if we look at investments, investments are also going down sharply. So look at it. What is needed for manufacturing next year and years coming ahead? What we need is people and factories to buy machinery, which is capital goods. Capital good production has dropped by 28%. And along with that, construction goods, things needed for construction, another big sector, which involves investments, big ticket investments, that has gone down by 17%. And what is more, government spending on infrastructure building and capital investments, that has gone down in this year during the lockdown by 9%. Disaster number three, there's been a huge increase in inequality in this country. At the beginning of this year, actually towards the end of last year, December 2019, there were about 40.6 crore people with jobs in India. It dropped sharply during the lockdown, and then there was a recovery in July and September. But in November, it's dropped again. So today, we have about 39.4 crore people employed. That is 1.2 crore less than what it was last year. And mind you, in the same period, the number of people who are able-bodied and can work has gone up by 2.2 crore. So 2.2 crore rise in the working age population and a 1.2 crore drop in the number of people who have jobs. You can understand why inequality will grow. And I'll look at the data compiled by CMI about the listed companies and their earnings that they reported in the September quarter, which is July, August, September, all their earnings. Their profits went up by 569%. I'm repeating, 569% jump in profit. Remove inflation from that. Remove that 7% inflation from that. And yet, you have a 562% growth in real profits for the corporate sector for the listed companies, the biggest companies in India. And think about it. In that same quarter, India's GDP overall economy contracted by 7.5%. Look at wages. Wages and salaries went up by 3.5% in that same period. You're just for inflation. What do you get? You get a negative real wage growth of 3.5%. Now look at it. You might say that, okay, this profit is not for all companies. So maybe it is possible that the wages went down in companies which made losses. No, the number of companies which made profits, but yet cut wages was about 50% of all these companies. 50% of all these companies made more than 10% profit but cut wages for their workers. Real wages were cut by all companies. About 70% of all these companies cut real wages of workers. Many of them probably made some losses, but despite that, many who made profits still cut wages of workers. So they took this as an excuse to reduce what they were going to pay wages to workers and employees. And that means that this is a structural change they put in place which is not going to change very soon. This brings me to disaster number four and that is what has happened to the middle class. The middle class has traditionally been protected from economic slowdowns. Any economic setback that India has had, the middle class has more or less survived it. This is one year when the middle class has faced the worst of it. For every 100 people who had salary jobs in 2019, 21 lost it. And most of these would be part of the middle class. So the middle class had a very bad year, white collar jobs shrunk sharply. And along with that, they had to dip into their savings and spend 68% of people who responded to a survey by a company called Local Circle said that they had to eat into their savings to run their daily expenses because they either lost their job or they had to take pay cuts or they didn't get paid in time. Even an RBI survey, the November RBI consumer survey tells us that about 63%, 63% of respondents said that their income had gone down. And this is just November, very recent. It's not as if there's been a recovery. 63% said their income has gone down. And this number would be broadly correct for the entire middle class. And finally, disaster number five, you're seeing it in the headlines wherever it's actually making it, which is farmers out on the road on the borders of Delhi. Thousands and thousands of farmers have been parked there for more than a month, fighting the biting cold to protest against the Modi government's three farm bills, which effectively is going to ensure that their income is going to go into the hands of big agribusinesses. Big agribusinesses will take over farming and farmers will lose out. That is the biggest disaster we are seeing right now because it affects many, many people across India. The mainstream media and mainstream economists will tell you that no, it's only the rich farmers who get affected by this because they are the only ones who get MSP. This is not true. New data available and made available to and it's been published in the national media as well shows that most of those who benefited from MSP are the poorest and smallest farmers. This is being taken away from them with these new three farm bills. But is this going to be the Modi government's Anna movement, the Anna movement, the Anna movement, which kind of paralysed the UPA government? Is this farming, the farmers protests and the coming workers protests, is that going to paralyze the Modi government in 2021? This is a question that one has to ask and will the Modi government listen to it and make suitable changes and not just be a soot boot ki sarkar, which only caters to big business right now with a change track, with a change its course and make things better for the average Indian. Now, that will only happen if you speak up. That's the only way the Modi government will listen to you. That's the only way where the mainstream media will be forced to take your voice and make the government listen and do something about your daily problems. So here's wishing the 2021 is a year when you and I don't remain silent anymore.