COVID-19 pandemic accelerated class inequalities and poverty in India. Comment.

The pandemic acted as an inequality accelerator: the lockdown recession crushed informal earners while asset owners recovered quickly, producing a K-shaped recovery that widened India's class divide.

Evidence of deepened inequality and poverty

• Pew Research (2021) estimated India's middle class shrank by about 3.2 crore while the ranks of the poor swelled by roughly 7.5 crore in 2020.
• Azim Premji University's State of Working India (2021) found some 23 crore Indians slipped below a minimum-wage poverty line; CMIE recorded unemployment near 24 per cent in April 2020.
• Informality magnified the shock: with around 90 per cent of workers informal and unprotected, closures triggered a mass migrant exodus of over a crore returnees.
• Wealth concentrated at the top: Oxfam reported Indian billionaire wealth rising sharply through 2020–21 even as incomes of the bottom half fell.
• Education and health divides: online schooling excluded households without devices or connectivity (ASER surveys), while catastrophic health spending pushed families into debt.
• Gender: women lost jobs disproportionately and exited the workforce; surging MGNREGA demand signalled rural distress.

State cushioning — PMGKAY free grain for 80 crore people, Jan Dhan cash transfers, the e-Shram registry — moderated destitution but not the structural widening. Recovery policy must now rebuild informal-sector security, urban employment safety nets and public investment in health and education.