NEW DELHI, Aug 23: Meghalaya and five other states in the country have been recording lower per capita income after the COVID-19 pandemic period, data compiled by the National Statistical Office for 21 states and Union Territories for the 2021-22 fiscal showed.
Six states are yet to recover from the pandemic-induced income shock, the official data said. Among the worst affected states are Uttar Pradesh (-6.08%), Kerala (-3.9%), Uttarakhand (-1.52%), Meghalaya (-1.8%), Jharkhand (-0.9%) and Punjab (-0.12%).
On the other hand, 14 states saw their per capita income exceed the pre-COVID levels in fiscal 2021-22 with Andhra Pradesh (9.74%) leading the chart followed by Bihar (9.4%), Karnataka (7.8%) and Tamil Nadu (6.6%). Other such states include Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Telangana, Tripura, Jammu & Kashmir and Delhi.
Among the states, Sikkim had the highest per capita income in the 2021-22 fiscal (Rs 2.56 lakh per annum) followed by Haryana (Rs 1.79 lakh) and Karnataka (Rs 1.68 lakh). Bihar continued to have the lowest per capita income (Rs 30,779) followed by Uttar Pradesh (Rs 40,432).
Except West Bengal and Manipur, the per capita income of 32 states and UTs for which data is available, declined during FY21 when the government imposed a nationwide lockdown in view of the COVID-19 outbreak, the data said.
According to the data released by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, nearly 78 million jobs were lost during the quarter of June 2020 which coincided with the first wave of COVID-19 and 13 million jobs were lost during the second wave of the pandemic in June quarter of 2021.
In fiscal 2021-22, seven states led by Andhra Pradesh (11.43%) saw double-digit growth in gross state domestic product, followed by Rajasthan (11.04%), Bihar (10.98%), Telangana (10.88%), Odisha (10.19%) and Madhya Pradesh (10.12%).
The Indian economy grew at 8.7% during 2021-22 after contracting to 6.6% during the previous fiscal.
