Eighteen months into the pandemic, there is a definite sense of recovery in the Indian economy. Gross domestic product in April-June of FY22 was 20 per cent more than same period a year earlier, and services activity is picking up more recently. But the long-drawn recovery is also beset with a legacy problem: lacklustre demand.

       This could well be a result of a poor employment and income situation—unemployment rose in August according to Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy. The symptoms, though, are visible in real consumption data. A look at broadly dis-aggregated data on ...