Recovery tracker: Workplace visits near normal, highest since March 2020

Traffic congestion has also increased for major cities in the latest week

Crowds at the office are back to near-normal levels.

The number of workplace visits is within two per cent of the time before Covid-19 took hold in India, show’s search engine giant Google’s mobility data. Retail and recreation visits also showed an uptick.  Google’s mobility report makes use of anonymized location data to track how people are moving during the pandemic. The data is released with a lag. The latest is as of October 28 (see chart 1).

Traffic congestion has also increased accordingly, shows data from global location technology firm TomTom International. Mumbai’s traffic congestion is up for the second week in a row. It came in at 23 per cent below 2019 levels, higher than the 29 per cent seen in the previous week. Curbs on public transport are also slowly being eased. Single-journey tickets are now allowed for fully-vaccinated passengers on Mumbai’s local trains. Only passes for the longer term, such as monthly ones, were being allowed earlier for most passengers. New Delhi's traffic congestion came in at 10 per cent below normal compared to 17 per cent in the previous week (see chart 2).

Business Standard also tracks emissions of nitrogen dioxide. It comes from industrial activity and vehicles.  Mumbai emissions are 56 per cent below 2019 levels. This is based on Bandra locality data. Delhi emissions are 12 per cent below 2019. Both are closer to normal than was seen in the previous week (see chart 3,4).

The Indian Railways registered higher growth in the quantity of goods it carried during the week. Freight loading grew 11.6 per cent compared to the same period last year. Growth had been 9.1 per cent in the previous week.  Freight revenue was up 20.2 per cent compared to 17.2 per cent in the previous week (see chart 5).

India generated more electricity in the previous week than the corresponding period in 2019 and 2020. Power plants across the country contributed to the generation of 3,620 million units of electricity on a seven-day rolling average basis for the week ending Sunday, based on data reported on the next day. This seven-day rolling average figure was 3.9 per cent higher than in 2020. It was 24.5 per cent higher than 2019. Power generation has been rising in recent times after a drop in growth from mid-October onwards (see chart 6).

Business Standard tracks these weekly economic indicators to get a current picture of how the economy is doing. Official macreconomic data is often released with a lag. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators as different countries initiated lockdowns to control the Covid-19 pandemic. All data, except Google, is as of Sunday October 31.