There is almost no work, said Ratan, 46, who was working in a printing company before he returned to his home village in April. Before the pandemic lockdown, Ansari had a steady job at a garment factory in the industrial town of Manesar near New Delhi, earning $200 a month, he said. The economy still contracted an unprecedented 24% in the April-June quarter, with another downturn forecast for July-September. Before the pandemic lockdown, Ansari had a steady job at a garment factory in the industrial town of Manesar near New Delhi, earning $200 a month, he said. For India's nearly 70 million traders, who employ about 400 million people, an upturn could not come fast enough.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer were awarded the Nobel Prize in economics on Monday for research on alleviating global poverty. The trio pioneered an approach to poverty reduction that was based on carefully designed experiments that sought answers to specific policy questions. Duflo, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the youngest person and second woman to be awarded the prize. Kremer, a professor at Harvard, used field work to test how school results could be improved in western Kenya during the mid-1990s. "This year's laureates have introduced a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty," organizers said in a statement.