Analyzing the Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown Policies on India's Agricultural Wholesale Markets

by

by : 
Aritra N.

Summary

COVID-19 heavily impacted India's economy in 2020, as it caused a 23.9% year-on-year drop in India's GDP in Q2 2020. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic caused massive drops in the quantities of agricultural commodities shipped to wholesale markets due to lockdown policies put in place during the first wave disrupting the transport of goods. A lot of research has examined the effects of the nation-wide lockdown during the first COVID-19 wave on agricultural markets, but there has been a dearth of research on the effects of later waves of COVID-19 lockdowns on agricultural markets. This paper aims to analyze the effects of the second and third lockdowns on agricultural prices and quantities in the wholesale markets by conducting a regression analysis comparing the prices and quantities during the lockdowns and outside the lockdowns across multiple commodities and states. An analysis of the lockdown policies in each state will then be conducted to explain the statistical results.