Disparate and slow recovery of sentiments

Consumer sentiments have been recovering, but at a very slow pace. Worse still, this recovery has been decelerating in recent months. Further, this recovery is skewed in favour of the rich

After over two years since the devastating lockdown of March-April 2020, the Index of Consum­er Sentiments (ICS) is still sign­ificantly lower than its pre-lockdown level. The ICS of May 2022 was 35.7 per cent lower than its level in February 2020. Households have suffered a lot more than can be gauged by the usual economic indicators like GDP growth.

The recovery has been uneven. Enterprises reaped record profits and the government benefited by collecting record taxes. But, households struggled to see their nominal incomes recover to their pre-pandemic levels. Average household income in January 2022 was just 3.1 per cent higher