Page 91 - Sonbeel Utsab 2024

operate on a small or medium scale and, therefore, lacks resilience to any kind of
shocks. Therefore, it can be intuitively anticipated that due to the uncertainty
generated by the spread of COVID-19 and disruption and shock induced by
lockdown coupled with the lingering after effect this category of people will face
increased vulnerability to losing livelihood. Faced with existing liabilities and fixed
cost a section of them has to face closure or near closure. This will put tremendous
additional burden on the existing condition of unemployment.

Impact on Poverty
While on one hand increase in unemployment and decline in income is
expected to shrink in aggregate demand and make the recovery difficult, this on the
other hand is going to increase the incidences of poverty with far reaching socio-
political implications. This is more so since 53.7 percent of the households in Assam
has single earner.

As per the latest NSSO estimate (2011-12) poverty head count ratio in the
state stands at 32 percent. In the rural Assam poverty rate is estimated as 33.9 percent
and urban poverty at 20.5 percent. A decompositional analysis of poverty for the state
indicates that in the rural areas incidence of poverty is particularly high among the
agricultural casual labourers (68.2 percent) and also non-agricultural casual
labourers (38 percent). Similarly, urban poverty too is found to be high among the
casual labourers (45.7 percent), and also among the self-employed (29.7 percent). It
is, therefore, found that the casual labourers – both in rural and urban areas and the
category of people who are self-employed, especially in urban areas – are most
vulnerable consequent on COVID-19 and lockdown, and as mentioned earlier are
expected to suffer even more.

Using the NSSO unit level data it is possible to examine the sensitivity of the
poverty rates to any fall in the levels of income (and consumption) in order to gauge
the impact of COVID-19 on various section of population. Accordingly, three
scenarios have been examined i.e. with 5 percent, 10 percent and 15 percent fall in
income due to the probable impact of COVID-19 on economic growth and
employment as discussed earlier.

Impact on Agricultural Production
Data show that the summer paddy i.e. paddy transplanted during November-
December and harvested during May-June accounts for 16.5 percent of total area
under paddy in Assam accounting for 22.4 percent of the total paddy production. On
the other hand, the autumn paddy i.e. paddy transplanted during March-April and
harvested in June- July accounts for 6 percent of the area under paddy cultivation and
3.7 percent of production the state (Economic Survey 2018-19, Directorate of

Economics and Statistics, Assam).At present there is no information on reported loss
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