<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
India as well as nations across the world are facing serious problems on two fronts- saving society and saving economy. The entire world is caught in this virtual Catch 22 situation. By focussing only on saving society, the economy would suffer and vice versa. There appears to be no option but to try and attempt both. While coronavirus cases continue to climb and which, till May 3 recorded over 40,000; the government cannot afford to let its guard down. The economy has been ignored since health was more important than wealth. On the other hand, even before coronavirus, the Indian economy was precariously slowing down and growth projection was 4.8 per cent for the last fiscal. Today, as per the International Monetary Fund(IMF)India’s growth rate is expected to slide further down at 1.9%. The problem has been demand destruction, which has only worsened. According to CMIE, 12 crore jobs were lost just a few weeks after the lockdown was imposed. Therefore, the Modi government has to come up with a large fiscal stimulus that will put money in the hands of people – just enough that they start spending. Only then can demand begin to come back and trigger virtuous cycle of economic activity. It certainly won’t happen overnight. In order to initiate the process of economic activities, the Modi government sought to do when it announced a slew of measures that would be followed simultaneously with extension of the nationwide lockdown. The challenge from both fronts is humungous and would take more than the relaxations announced. The Narendra Modi government is correct to shift from its policy of only containing Covid-19 to balancing the attempt to contain the virus spread with the revival of the economic activity. There is no option but to allow migrant workers to return because of the fear that pervades their lives right now. Thus, dissuading chief ministers from calling back migrants to their home states is crucial for the success of this policy. Though the government looks to gradually restart the economic activity, states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have started bringing their migrant population back. Bringing migrants back home may be helpful to these states from where the labourers came from but the problem is what about most states that depend on such migrants for economic activities? When the migrants return to their home states, it will mean that many states will not have the labour required for construction work and MSME sectors. Movement of millions of migrants is likely to continue for weeks. Even if migrants arrive home, they will have to undergo the 14-day quarantine period and if required, repeat the period. Most migrants belong to states that have poorer capacity for welfare distribution and health services. Citizens have a right to return to their homes, but there will likely be widespread consequences, which some CMs have rightly underlined. Basic minimum living conditions would encourage them to get back to work quickly. Currently, the requirement of rent and absence of support while looking for new work in the case of job losses is constraining workers from coming back to zones of employment. Industry representatives are concerned over resumption of units if labourers go back to their native places. They asked if the government had to allow migrant labourers to go back then why industry was being asked to restart their operations?. This is indeed a catch 22 situation that India finds itself in.<\/p>\n
Difficult balancing act<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}