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How is life under economic crisis?

Did you ask your parents about 1991?
1991 is not very tough, we saw that petrol price almost doubled over, and food prices increased by 20% and thats about it. After that, all prices increased by 10% and then it was all business as usual. Mind you , India has enough gold to secure loans , Does Pakistan have enough gold in its mart ?

we
This question should be asked next week. Considering no real progress has been made in discussions, the oil situation might take a hit next week. That's when the imact should be assessed.



In 1991 India didn't really default. We had to sell our gold but we secured the bailout. Here the issue is not the crisis but the real possibility of default.
we did not sell out gold, we only put it as a gurantee for the loan , it was shipped to UK, and once things settled down, we got the gold back.


India will be in similar situation after around 1 year.
with $600 billion Forex reserves ???
 
1991 is not very tough, we saw that petrol price almost doubled over, and food prices increased by 20% and thats about it.
Is that all? I heard there was enough money to pay only few months of salary to government employees.
 
Questions to Pakistanis living in Pakistan -
  1. Do you see any serious impact of the economic crisis in your day to day lives? Have you had to make adjustments in the way you live?
  2. Is the crisis affecting the poor more than the middle class?
  3. Is there uncertainty over your means of employment?
  4. Is the situation worse in some regions compared to others?
This is not an attempt to troll or be mean. I am genuinely trying to understand what life feels like in a country which is facing a payment default and forex crisis. I had similar questions during the Lankan crisis but didn't know who to ask as I can't see any active Lankan members. The only time India faced a BoP crisis was during Manmohan Singh's time as finance minister in 1991. I was in school and didn't care or understand much, let alone feel how it impacted anything in our lives.
Except for inflation, there is no difference in the day to day live, yes it is hard for middle class and harder for poor families but haven't seen any reduced activity. Yesterday had a talk with an employee of shipping company (works with eCommerce stores) and he said in December last year shipment was reduced but now it is back to normal.
 
The poor are feeling every single increase.

It will be a delayed impact for the middle classes and the upper class. They have undeclared incomes and undeclared wealth, so they are able to absorb costs - for now.

The elite won't notice anything. Those have so much wealth they won't care.

In 6 months time if stuff isn't improved we will see the real impact.
 
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I thought as a student of economics (or at least as an interested follower) you would be interested in 1991 for case study.

I do not recall any hardships in our house during that time. Everything was as usual, so it never struck me if the crisis was bad or not. Hence the interest was never really piqued. I only came to know about it in later years as it was cited in some or the other article. By that time many other had struck - Dotcom bust, sub prime crisis, covid.

I don't really follow economics much. I did follow business and finance quite closely until 2020, because part of my job required it. After that not so much. Unless something is really big news, like the Adani stuff, I don't dive deep into these things. Hence my question in the OP was also mainly around how lives are getting affected by it, the reality vs what it is made out to be in social media, and not on the causes of or remedies for the crises.
 
Questions to Pakistanis living in Pakistan -
  1. Do you see any serious impact of the economic crisis in your day to day lives? Have you had to make adjustments in the way you live?
  2. Is the crisis affecting the poor more than the middle class?
  3. Is there uncertainty over your means of employment?
  4. Is the situation worse in some regions compared to others?
This is not an attempt to troll or be mean. I am genuinely trying to understand what life feels like in a country which is facing a payment default and forex crisis. I had similar questions during the Lankan crisis but didn't know who to ask as I can't see any active Lankan members. The only time India faced a BoP crisis was during Manmohan Singh's time as finance minister in 1991. I was in school and didn't care or understand much, let alone feel how it impacted anything in our lives.
other than a few petrol pumps not givng petrol, when they have full stocks, i haven`t felt much. But i am a farmer, so i am not really concerned with employment as someone from working class!
 
other than a few petrol pumps not givng petrol, when they have full stocks, i haven`t felt much. But i am a farmer, so i am not really concerned with employment as someone from working class!
For a farmer or working class you know very good English. Where and how did you learn?
 
1991 is not very tough, we saw that petrol price almost doubled over, and food prices increased by 20% and thats about it. After that, all prices increased by 10% and then it was all business as usual. Mind you , India has enough gold to secure loans , Does Pakistan have enough gold in its mart ?

we

we did not sell out gold, we only put it as a gurantee for the loan , it was shipped to UK, and once things settled down, we got the gold back.



with $600 billion Forex reserves ???
I tried to see if there is any good information about it. Not much since it was 'before internet', but thankfully the reserve bank has documented the history in detail: See chapter 11 of https://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/RHvol-4.aspx
 
For a farmer or working class you know very good English. Where and how did you learn?
i am more of a zimedar/ small landlord kind. not exactly farmer though, also i have done mphil in English literature and IR.
 

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