Five shades of unemployment
Shade 1 Subhash Pandey (45yrs commerce graduate) was working as an account assistant at a small shoe factory in Kanpur when the nationwide lockdown was imposed in March 2020. He lives in a rented house, and has two daughters aged 12yr and 9yr. Jyoti, his wife (39yrs, political science graduate) undertakes tailoring assignments from a local boutique to help in meeting household expenses. Post lockdown, Subhash lost his job, and tailoring assignments for Jyoti have also reduced. The expenses on education of the daughters have risen; and kitchen expenses have also gone up due to food inflation. Subhash now works as a delivery agent for online retailers and food delivery services. He gets Rs7-10 per delivery he makes. He needs to make at least 80-100 deliveries per day to earn (net of fuel expenses) what he was earning before lockdown. Jyoti is now working 8hrs (against the earlier 4-5hr) doing miscellaneous jobs (tailoring, pickle making, packaging etc.) to earn the same amount. Their sav...