We may fall even further behind Bangladesh.

"This month, Bangladesh's Cabinet Secretary told reporters that GDP per capita had grown by 9% over the past year, rising to $2,227. Pakistan's per capita income, meanwhile, is $1,543. In 1971, Pakistan was 70% richer than Bangladesh; today, Bangladesh is 45% richer than Pakistan," Mihir Sharma. "India's per capita income in 2020-21 was a mere $1,947." Share of women in Bangladeshi labor force has increased consistently, while it has been falling in India and Pakistan. "Four out of five women are not working in India," The Diplomat. "In 1990, FLFP (female labor force participation) was 30.3 percent. By 2019, it had declined to 20.5 percent, according to the World Bank." "Covid-19 has only exacerbated these trends," wrote Mitali Nikore. "Between March-April 2020, 20.6 percent of female workforce, moved out of the labor force, versus 13.4 percent of men. Even as of December 2020, the size of female labor force continued to be 14 percent lower than December 2019, vs 1 percent for men, according to CMIE data," Financial Express (FE). Only Algeria, Syria and Yemen are below us, the average for the world is 47%, World Bank. "And Bangladesh has maintained a public debt-to-GDP ratio between 30% and 40%. India and Pakistan will both emerge from the pandemic with public debt close to 90% of GDP." "The Centre's fiscal deficit for the financial year 2020-21 settled at 9.2 percent of the gross domestic product, marginally below the government's revised target of 9.5%," Business Standard. "In absolute terms, India's fiscal deficit was Rs 18.21 trillion, about Rs 27,194 crore (Rs 271.94 billion) lower than the projected Rs 18.48 trillion," "based on provisional estimates for FY21 GDP of Rs 197.46 trillion". On 18 May, the Reserve Bank (RBI) transferred Rs 991.22 billion to the government as surplus for the 9 months to 31 March. Accounting year for the RBI used to be from 1July to 30 June, but it decided to change it to 1 April to 31 March to coincide with the financial year of the government.  "While the interest income for the nine months ended March 2021 was lower by Rs 40,276 crore (Rs 402.76), 'Other income' increased by Rs 23, 876 crore, resulting in a fall in total income of Rs 16,399 crore," wrote Prof NR Bhusnurmath. The RBI got this money by creative accounting, decreasing its provisions for its Contingency Fund to 60.65% of its expenditure for the nine months to 31 March, as opposed to 79.55% of expenditure for the whole of its last accounting year, FE. "The size of the RBI's balance sheet increased by Rs 3.73 trillion, or 6.99 percent, to Rs 57.08 trillion as on March 31," moneycontrol. "Central bank profits, or seigniorage, belong to the government, and are normally transferred back to governments," wrote prof Ila Patnaik and Radhika Pandey. "The RBI decided to maintain its Contingency Risk Buffer (CRB) at 5.5 percent of the balance-sheet. This amounted to Rs 20,710 crore." Patnaik and Pandey insist that this amount should also have been transferred to the government which would have allowed it to buy vaccines. "So, not only is this a very generous payout in itself, it remains the highest ever, except for the year 2018-19 when the RBI transferred to the GOI (government of India) a sum of Rs 1,761 billion. But 2018-19 was an outlier, because in that year, the RB had chosen to give effect, at one go, to the recommendations of the Bimal Jalan Committee on the central bank's Economic Capital Framework (ECF), opting not only to pay out its entire annual surplus of Rs 1,235 billion to the GOI, but to release an additional quantum of Rs 526 billion by marking down its accumulated capital reserves," wrote Anjan Basu. "India's central banks took  a step toward formalizing quantitative easing, pledging to buy up to Rs 1 trillion ($14 billion) of bonds this quarter to keep borrowing costs low and support the economy's recovery," Anirban nag and Subhadip Sircar. By printing money to finance government debt the RBI may lose control of inflation as happened to Venezuela, wrote Andy Mukherjee. We may end up borrowing from Bangladesh.