"Jaan hai to jahan hai"- PM Modi while addressing the nation on 24 March 2020. He announced a nationwide lockdown from midnight of that day, for a period of 21 days. And that went on being extended upto 31 May in a phased manner.
The lockdown restricted people from stepping out of their homes. All modes of transportation–road, air and rail–were suspended. All industries and institutions were put to a halt. Only essential services were allowed to continue.
130 Crore Indians were punched into confinement with just 4 hours notice. Our Prime Minister loves to give surprises, but these surprises have always turned out to be disasterous. The streets of the country with the second-largest population had never witnessed such silence.
Just hours after the lockdown was announced, migrant workers from across the country began streaming out of the cities on foot. With factories and workplaces shut down and no way to earn a living, these daily-wage earners began their Dandi March to go back to their native villages. The workers thought they would return back to farming and get some jobs under MNREGA. As all public transport services were under shutdown, these workers had no choice instead of walking on foot or bicycling hundreds and thousands of kilometeres. As the police won't allow these workers to travel through roads due to the lockdown, some chose rail tracks to reach their destination. Some cases were reported where freight trains ran over migrant workers sleeping on the rail tracks.
Seeing all of this the government suddenly became conscious and woke up to do something for them, but that too didn't helped many of them. The Railways launched "Shramik Special" trains for the migrant workers and others stranded. But still some preferred walking on foot instead of boarding these trains, because some officials were found charging money from them inspite the government saying its free. Many more arrangements were done by both the Central and the State governments, but in many cases these seemed to have failed implementations.
Where such big working machinery and powers of the governments failed, there came an individual and his small team who managed this in a much better way by sending many workers back to their village safe and sound. How? I don't know. And of course you know that individual very well. At a time when we see governments failing, some NGOs and such individuals were doing a much better work even though for a smaller number of people.
Did you realised that the reason behind this migrant workers crisis was lack of earning money? But this wasn't the case with daily-wage workers only, many were kicked out of their jobs and some sent to low paid leaves as their bosses can't afford to pay them with all the workplaces shut down. Almost 12.2 crore people have lost their jobs due to the covid pandemic, out of which almost 75% people were small traders and wage-workers. These big numbers show that how carelessly the pandemic has been handled. But wait, there's lot more which makes the situation even worse.
As all of this data was coming, there were signs of a big economic blow so the Central government took many steps to counter this. On 12 May 2020 PM announced the 'Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan', laying emphasis on the use of domestic products and becoming 'economically self-reliant'. And on the same day he announces the '₹20 lakh crore economic package', claimed to be accounting 10% of India's GDP, which isn't the case. The government had included both fiscal and monetary stimulus in it and kept on defending its strategy. But if we just consider just the fiscal stimulus, it only consisted of 0.75% to 1.3% of India's GDP. And today just as the low stimulus, the GDP too is low, better to say the lowest.
When there's too much talks about GDP, let me tell you what happened to it. For those who don't exactly know what GDP is and how much it matters, it is the gross amount of goods and services produced in the country in a year. It is very important for it to grow or be constant, as it affects our pockets. If it is decreasing, it means that the people don't want to spend money and production slows down, in short there is lack of demand. And as you all know that on 31 August 2020 the Indian government announced the GDP numbers for the first quarter (April - June) for the fiscal year of 2020-21, which came out as a big shock than what was expected. The first quarter GDP showed a negative growth of 23.9% when compared to the GDP numbers of the same quarter of the past fiscal year. But it isn't just because of the covid pandemic that we are seeing these kind of numbers, our GDP growth had been sinking since the demonetisation and the wrong implementation of GST. In the fourth quarter (January - March) of the fiscal year 2019-20 the GDP growth rate was 3.1%. We were having an annual 6%-7% growth in the past decade, which was the highest and we were aiming at double-digit growth rates. This dream didn't come true in positive rates but atleast we have achieved negative double-digit growth rates.
And there are many more numbers coming up in the near future.
Now that's all about the economy and unemployment, but due to which all of this happened, i.e., the Coronavirus pandemic is not being taken seriously. The TV media is doing a fantastic job by not doing anything. That's obviously right! Who's gonna ask questions on covid, unemployment and the economy? The SSR and Kangana are much more important than these.
Okay, lets put them aside and return to the covid pandemic. As of 12 September 2020, India's coronavirus cases sum up to 46,59,984 and with 97,000+ daily cases, new records are being made everyday. Just wait for a few more days, there will be 1,00,000 daily subscribers of the coronavirus. Although lately, but the governments are realising that they need to test more in order to curb the transmission of the virus. But there are many examples where the states are trying to hide the number of deaths, like the Delhi government and the West Bengal government deciding whether a death is due to covid or not. Such government interferences make the situations even worse.
Its not only the Central and State governments who are totally responsible, but its also because of us that the virus is spreading. Many have forgotten that their nose and mouth are on their faces and not on their necks, and many don't even know whether they have any of these. I've seen many people saying that the virus won't affect them and many even denying the existence of this virus. They say, we'll be dying either, whether it be from a virus or something else. But I've a question for them. Why do you cry when someone dies in your family? You should presume that they were born to die.
The virus won't affect you? Okay. You don't care if you die? Okay.
But your family will care if the virus catches you. They will spend all their money to see you healthy. They will cry if something happens to you. Its not you who's gonna suffer, it'll be your family.
In the end, the government was neither able to save 'jaan' nor the 'jahan'. The cases keep on rising and the economy keeps on dying.
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