Covid-19, Lockdown2.0 and the risk of forgetting the battle against Poverty, Hunger & Other Illnesses
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Under Prime Minister Modi, India’s approach towards the Covid-19 pandemic has been no-nonsense and timely. However, as days pass by, adjacent challenges (such as jobs, wages, and movement of people & goods) will intensify.
For the next six months to one year, the Modi administration will have to mull the only real solution — a trade-off between the economy & public health.
The entire economy — lock, stock & barrel — will have to be brought back to its feet. Sooner the better. No exceptions, no phase-wise muddling. A modern-day economy is a jet whose engines are too intricately interconnected across different sectors, regions and classifications. It only works when all engines are firing. Switch off any one engine and it descends until it crashes.
This will be a massive change in beliefs from the current approach.
Presently, India’s approach has been singular — containment before anything else. The Central & State governments have come together to put the economy under comatose because the belief is that any economic activity will only serve to weaken the containment of Covid-19.
No doubt, any economic activity will entail movement of people resulting in higher chances of infections. But, unless we lock ourselves down till we have a vaccine against Covid-19, these are mere delaying tactics. In fact, if stretched too far, these lockdowns will only make us weaker in this fight against Covid-19.
And the fissures are beginning to emerge.
A day after the announcement of the extension of the lockdown , about a thousand people gathered in the heart of India’s commercial capital — Mumbai, hoping to get onboard a train that took them home to safety, food security and family. The TimesNow video can be seen below. It is a possible glimpse into the present & continued sufferings & worries of India’s subaltern.
In a population of 1.3 billion people, unfortunately, there will always be gatherings like the ones seen in Delhi, Surat and Mumbai of people who will demand relief from restrictions. This will keep the administration at their toes.
Importantly, the fear of a repeat of such events will serve as a distraction from what the administration’s main task should be — researching for a vaccine, a cure and figuring out a cheaper, time-efficient way of doing more tests.
At worst, these lockdowns are also a potent fuel that impoverishes our people to the extent that they are even more susceptible to Covid-19 and other immunity-based infections.
According to the business newspaper LiveMint, we are already down to 35% of our GDP. Even at full capacity India has an unemployment rate of 5%. Imagine the unemployment and the loss of wages now. No amount of work from homes and pleas to employers will save jobs. It takes money to keep people on the rosters. No government and no financial institution in the world will bankroll such funds endlessly, without any economic returns.
There will be millions of people without the means to buy healthy food for themselves and their family.
And there is no way that the administration can compensate for wage loss.
Even during the best of times, India’s ability to effectively deliver cash transfers, water, ration etc. has been, at best, patchy. In a lockdown, this ability will worsen. Unlike the West, the local administration in India is unusually starved for cash resources but always brimming with police powers.
And so, we will have a situation wherein the local administration is able to plan, coerce & restrict people movement but the same administration will be unable to plan & deliver movement of goods & services, especially essentials like water, food, medicines, doctor consultations and information.
Also, in 2018 alone, half a million people in India died due to tuberculosis. In fact, in a country that still faces acute bouts of cholera, malaria, encephalitis and tuberculosis, to be over-obsessed with Covid-19 is insane!
Having lost their wages and, with it, the purchasing power to buy medicines, hundreds of thousands of Indians could be expected to silently die of these illnesses.
And this is how India will get sucked into a vicious spiral of poverty, hunger and illness. Lockdown will make people unemployed and fearful about the length of their savings runway. This will lead to unhealthy eating, hygiene & medical habits leading to reduced immunity.
Reduced immunity will lead to higher susceptibility of Covid-19 cases.
Of course, all this can change if India accepts the new global reality & the need for a seemingly inhuman trade-off between the economy and public health. The Modi administration will have to restart the economy and bravely convey to a mourning society that the deaths of thousands of fellow Indians will be an inevitable, necessary collateral for the greater good, especially for the good of the silent, millions of India’s subaltern.
Prime Minister Modi will be in an unenviable position. Luckily, the only leader on the horizon of Indian polity who has the political might & the nation’s confidence to take hard decisions is the Prime Minister himself.
