"Jaan bhi, Jahan bhi"
India has already gone through the biggest lockdown of the 21-day period in the modern history of human civilisation and it has now been extended further till 3 May to fight out the most contagious pathogen we have ever seen. The political consensus between the Centre and states on this extension has to be complemented by socio-economic measures in Lockdown 2.0 in the coming trying days.
From Wuhan of China Coronavirus Covid-19 have now reached every corner of the world, causing a devastating toll on human lives. Our worldview, our value system and our daily lifestyle - all are now changing so rapidly under lockdown in houses that we have to change ourselves in the post-lockdown period socially, behaviourally and culturally.
PM Modi has rightly termed this corona crisis as 'social emergency' and tried to make Indians conscious, responsible and gratuitous by different socio-cultural steps. We the Indians have joined this war whole-heartedly.
Now is the time to calibrate an synchronised exit from the national lockdown and set right the economy and livelihoods of millions of Indians in the context of the corona war. The Centre has outlined a graded exit plan to be executed nationally in the coming days taking into account both lives and livelihoods. As an emerging economy India can't afford to sit idly and make the total economic activities in lockdown mode for a few months. We have to forge a trade off between human lives and livelihoods, particularly for crores of workers in unorganised sectors of agriculture, industry and services.
The first and foremost casualty of the national lockdown has been the migrant labourers stranded in different states. Their desperation and unrest seen to reach home have to be mitigated sensibly by the authorities in a well planned humanitarian manner. With this problem of inter-state migrants we have to be prepared for repatriation of lakhs of international migrants, particularly from Saudi Arabia, which would pose another logistic as well as health problems in southern states.
As reported the authorities would identify least affected districts till April 20 wherein economic activities would be allowed afterwards in a graded way. But low testing rates across India is posing a serious problem in opening up the gateways of livelihoods for the people. Few states have not been up to the mark in Covid-19 testing and tracing the transmission curve despite having testing kits and other necessary health equipment.
The Centre has already announced the graded zoning of areas to tackle the community spreading by declaring hotspots red zones, non-hotspots white zones and green zones of districts across India. What is urgently needed is the Centre-states calibration in containing infection in graded corona zones at the earliest and contain further spreading of contagion by resorting to localised lockdown following the 'Bhilwara model'. Within 3rd May we should be able to identify the graded corona zones across the length and breadth of India so that we don't need to extend national lockdown further.
The harvesting season of rabi crops has now started and agricultural activities must now be unlocked to streamline supply chain of agricultural products from fields to warehouses through procurements. We need to acknowledge that so many migrant labourers have actually been agricultural labourers in their home states and their participation in harvesting is a necessity. But here is also a problem in that they have to be home quarantined for at least 14 days after their home-coming.
As nearly 90 per cent of our labour force has been in the unorganised sector, they are facing imminent job loss. MSME, tourism, restaurants and hotels, and other trade and businesses have been hard hit by this lockdown. Each and every segment of the economy is going through an uncertain phase. Vulnerable sections need more cash benefits to overcome this crisis. In this grim scenario the Central government should put forward a holistic economic package to boost the morale and motivation of industry and labour force. The MHA has already taken a graded step to roll out activities in different sectors of the economy after 20 April.
From the earlier mantra of "Jaan hai to Jahan hai" (if there is life, you can enjoy the world), we need to strategically shift to the new mantra of "Jaan bhi, Jahan bhi" (both life as well as our world matter) by unlocking the avenues of livelihoods for the masses in a phased manner in a 'new normal' India.
@ Sujit Roy
16.04.2020
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