In a 33-minute interview with Karan Thapar for The Wire, Mahesh Vyas, managing director and CEO of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, provides details on the collapse in consumer sentiment, and a sharp rise in unemployment due to lockdowns and restrictions imposed in the wake of COVID-19.
Vyas says that since the last week of March, consumer sentiment has fallen by 15%. This, in turn, must be viewed against the background of what has happened to consumer sentiment since April 2020. In that month, it was 57% lower than 2019-20. In April 2021, it was still 49% lower than 2019-20. Therefore, consumer sentiment has not really recovered since the start of the pandemic but, in fact, sizeably fallen further.