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By: Kshitij Anand,
The harrowing images of migrant workers desperate to go home, hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 19-day extension to the nationwide lockdown on Tuesday, serve as an important reminder of just how brutal the last 21 days have been, and how challenging the next 19 days will be for the lives and livelihoods of most Indians. Our political leadership has collectively determined that the blunt instrument of lockdowns are necessary to fight the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). Inexplicably, however, the task of implementing an appropriate national response to the economic crisis this poses has barely begun.
The harrowing images of migrant workers desperate to go home, hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 19-day extension to the nationwide lockdown on Tuesday, serve as an important reminder of just how brutal the last 21 days have been, and how challenging the next 19 days will be for the lives and livelihoods of most Indians. Our political leadership has collectively determined that the blunt instrument of lockdowns are necessary to fight the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). Inexplicably, however, the task of implementing an appropriate national response to the economic crisis this poses has barely begun.State governments are stymied by the lack of resources. The Centre is yet to announce a robust fiscal relief package. Finances apart, the sheer scale of relief required, combined with the lack of planning when the first lockdown was announced on March 25, has presented our bureaucracy with an unprecedented logistical challenge. The last 21 days have been spent desperately firefighting through a plethora of government orders to get relief measures, supply chains and essential services moving, leaving little time to devise systems that ensure communication, coordination and ground-level feedback. This is one reason why the police have so freely used their lathis and workers for essential services remain in short supply. Now, as the country enters the next phase of the lockdown with a likely phased opening up of the economy from April 20 onward, these logistical challenges will become even more acute and threaten to undermine potential economic gains. India simply cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the last 21 days. Going forward, at a minimum, three things need to be done.
Regards,
Kshitij.