Shubham Saroj
Right now, India is in a huge crisis. India is dealing with a lot of things such as:-
- The Pandemic,
- Farmer’s Protest,
- Religious Conflicts,
- Cross Border Infiltration,
- Falling Economy,
- Rising Inflation and
- Massive Unemployment.
The last problem which India is facing might be more severe than other problems as it directly impacts an individual in an unforgiving way. Even before the pandemic arrived, India’s growth had slowed down as the economy grew at a pace of just 3.1% during Jan-Mar 2020.
This means that conditions were pretty bad even before the pandemic arrived. In 2019, The Government of India officially confirmed that there was 45-Year High Unemployment.
When the government announced a lockdown in March 2020, things got only worse from that point of time. Millions of people lost their jobs from various sectors at various levels.
No matter what designation you were in, you were bound to be fired by your company. But the problem with unemployment is that it’s still not over. For millions of people the nightmare is still haunting them.
Just when potential vaccines were announced all around the world and we thought that things are going back to normal, a new strain of Covid-19 was found to be 70% more infectious and in India 35 lakh people lost their jobs in the month of November 2020 alone.
In the month of October 2020, more than 50,000 people lost their jobs and November was no different (expect even more job losses). According to (CMIE’s) Consumer Pyramids Household Survey, at 39.36 crores in November 2020, employment is still about 1 crore short of what it was in the March 2020 quarter.
What’s really shocking is that these are official numbers and the real numbers could be even higher. The Indian economy shrank by 7.5% in Q2, after registering a record fall of 23.9% in the first quarter. In both quarters, real GDP fell more sharply than employment.
Right now, India is in a vulnerable condition as neither an economic stimulus package has been announced that’s capable of direct cash transfer nor has it vaccinated anyone yet. The economic stimulus packages that were announced were merely short term loans which according to many economists won’t help India as of now.
According to them, India needs direct cash transfers where the government should provide paychecks like the US government to boost demand in the marketplace. India seems to be in a lot of troubles as it’s surrounded by a lot of problems from many sides.
As of writing this blog, the new strain of Covid-19 has reached India but this isn’t the worst part. The worst part is that the passengers carrying the new strain are untraceable or aren’t picking up the phone calls of the concerned authorities.
By this time, the lockdown restrictions have also been reduced and people could be seen not wearing a mask or not maintain social distancing. A raging pandemic, a new strain, reduced restrictions and people being out in the public looking for jobs, Oh Boy, looks like 2021 will be worse than 2020.
I wish 2021 might be a better year for not only India but also for all of humanity.
