write a essay on effects of
covid —19 in India
Answers
Answer:
In December, while Wuhan province was witnessing the beginning of the actual Covid-19 pandemic, India was facing massive and violent uprisings. Hundreds of thousands of Indians protested all over the country against the discriminatory anti-Muslim citizenship law that had just been passed by its parliament—the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)—and as a backlash violent attacks occurred on universities and Muslim working-class neighbourhoods by armed vigilantes. All this while the authorities were negating the presence of community transmission of the virus despite the first cases appearing way back in January to finally declare a 21-day lockdown on the midnight of 24 March, with only a 4 hour notice. This announcement, as in France, has triggered migration from the cities to the countryside, but of a completely different nature: in India, the internal migrant workers, day labourers and the poor—deprived of resources—have decided to return to their native villages. This tragic and deadly exodus of migrants fleeing cities is the most visible stigmata of the profound health, economic and social crisis that this threefold essay offers to analyse.
Making a Living under the Lockdown
What does “lockdown” mean in a context where people, not just the poorest, depend on mobility and sociability to make a living? Using culturalist clichés, many media have highlighted the “cultural” difficulty of accepting the principle of social distancing. Long before being a “cultural” issue, and if this argument is valid, in economies where informal employment is the rule rather than the exception, and where social protection remains the privilege of a minority, social connection and movement are simply necessary for survival and protection.
Given the crucial importance of movement and sociability, we can therefore imagine that the lockdown will have absolutely devastating consequences, and it already has. The invisibility of migrant workers, a vital link in India’s economy, has become glaringly apparent. They have simply been ignored by the lockdown measures. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of “stay home” provoked a massive influx of workers desperate to return home, even though transport infrastructure had already been drastically reduced. Testimonies collected over the first weeks of the lockdown in Tamil Nadu attest to widespread panic. The populations are used to shocks—the Tsunami in 2004, the demonetization in 2016—but the announcement of the lockdown seems much more frightening to them.
Conversely, lenders demand their due and refuse to lend. The Reserve Bank of India has announced a moratorium regarding the suspension of loan repayments. But this does not concern small financial companies, even though they are the ones that target the poor. Those companies keep on sending messages and oral instructions to borrowers in order to enforce repayments. Nationalized banks and some finance companies allow the suspension, but borrowers have to fill the specific online forms that are not accessible for many of them, especially when borrowers are poor rural women. This moratorium applies even less to informal lenders. In such a context, how do people manage? For now, they are “adjusting”, as we were told. They are drawing on the few savings available. While monetary savings are limited, many families, often through women, have a few hundred or even a few thousand rupees secretly hidden and intended to cope in case of a hard blow. They save on food. But this coping strategy is not sustainable.
Conclusion
In such a historical moment, one would expect to place national unity above all and to relegate stigmatization as well as religious/ethnic/caste/class-based polarization to the backstage. But nothing is less certain. As migrants go home, they face attacks and are ostracized by fear of infection. And it was not long before hatred discourses surfaced in this crisis with Muslim, north-eastern, tribal or Dalit Indians, all being accused of spreading the virus. It is yet to observe whether and how the government will take the opportunity of this crisis to further divide or re-unite its people. The immediate concern is for the poor and the minorities, who as we have seen, will be the first to suffer from this crisis. For them, the consequences of the lockdown will be dramatic. They will die at home, in silence, maybe from a much deadlier thing than the virus itself: the profound socioeconomic inequalities that divide Indian society.
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which originated in the city of Wuhan, China, has quickly spread to various countries, with many cases having been reported worldwide. As of May 8th, 2020, in India, 56,342 positive cases have been reported. India, with a population of more than 1.34 billion—the second largest population in the world—will have difficulty in controlling the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 among its population. Multiple strategies would be highly necessary to handle the current outbreak; these include computational modeling, statistical tools, and quantitative analyses to control the spread as well as the rapid development of a new treatment. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of India has raised awareness about the recent outbreak and has taken necessary actions to control the spread of COVID-19. The central and state governments are taking several measures and formulating several wartime protocols to achieve this goal. Moreover, the Indian government implemented a 55-days lockdown throughout the country that started on March 25th, 2020, to reduce the transmission of the virus. This outbreak is inextricably linked to the economy of the nation, as it has dramatically impeded industrial sectors because people worldwide are currently cautious about engaging in business in the affected regions.