India records highest-ever 4, 01,993 new cases, 3,523 deaths.
India reports 6,148 Covid deaths in the last 24 hours.
DEATHS.TERROR. FEAR.
It has been more than one and a half years since India reported its first case and it seems never-ending.
Have you ever wondered what all the below-poor line people or the ones who have severely been affected by the financial crisis would be going through right now? Post-lockdown has their life changed, has it taken a complete U-turn?
HOW IT ALL STARTED
India reported its first case on 27th January 2020 in Kerala. A 20 years old female presented to the Emergency Department in General Hospital, Thrissur, Kerala, with a one-day history of dry cough and sore throat. On 24th March, 2020 our honorable Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi called for a complete nationwide lockdown. After years this step was taken, all the schools, offices, the corporate building was shut down, nothing except hospitals, grocery stores, chemist were open. All of us turned to our healthcare system.
Due to this nationwide lockdown, many companies, businesses started to lay off their additional staff. People become unemployed, some families had no bread giver, some lost their only financial support system to Covid and what not! People’s worst nightmare was coming true, no money, no support, helplessness. Poverty seized India and it is continuing to capture it. From April to June 2020, India’s GDP dropped by a massive 24.4%. According to the latest national income estimates, in the second quarter of the 2020/21 financial year (July to September 2020), the economy contracted by a further 7.4%. The recovery in the third and fourth quarters (October 2020 to March 2021) was still weak, with GDP rising 0.5% and 1.6%, respectively. This means that the overall rate of contraction in India was (in real terms) 7.3% for the whole 2020/21 financial year.
HOW IS IT ALL GOING
While economies worldwide have been hit hard, India has suffered one of the largest contractions. During the 2020/21 financial year, the rates of decline in GDP for the world were 3.3% and 2.2% for emerging market and developing economies. The fact that India’s growth rate in 2019 was among the highest makes the drop due to Covid-19 even more noticeable.
Comparing national unemployment rates in 2020, India’s rate of 7.1% indicates that it has performed relatively poorly – both in terms of the world average and compared with a set of reference group economies with similar per capita incomes. Unemployment rates were more muted within the reference group economies and were also kept low by generous labor market policies to keep people in work. This pandemic has taken a devastating turn on the lives of common people, they have no way out, to meet expenses one has to find its way and when you can’t find any way out from this vicious circle of life, you take the ultimate step, that is DEATH/SUICIDE.
Nearly 84% of Indian households are finding it difficult to cope up with the mental stress of financial handling. The harsh statistic finds corroboration in the unemployment rate, which had crossed 27% in early May, up nearly four-fold from levels in January – February, according to CMIE data. The jobless rate has dropped to less than 24%. India’s unemployment rate in 2021 was at worst in the past 29 years.
India’s unemployment rate sharply rose from 5.27% to 7.11% in 2020. India displays the highest unemployment rate as compared to other countries such as China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and, Nepal. This rise in unemployment was to this level that India saw its first-time double-digit percentage in May according to CME. The country is looking at 10 million job losses during the month.
THE LONG TERM EFFECTS
During India’s first lockdown, the income of individuals dropped by 40% which is almost three months’ worth of income. Post-pandemic, the number of poor in India is projected to have more than doubled and the number of people in the middle class to have fallen by a third. This sharp rise in poverty after the first lockdown is consistent with a variety of surveys that highlighted the depth of the crisis.
To meet their expenses, citizens started going to other alternatives such as the trickle-down effect, where we do our household work to reduce expenses. The other alternative is the yojanas that the government gave to the rural or below the poverty line people, such as Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, etc. So what next? Will India be able to overcome this deadly level of unemployment? Will the nation be the same again? Will it progress.? Only time will tell!
http://www.economics.survey.gopro.com/
CITATIONS
Kindly find the links below for research and cites
– Stuti Mundra
ECONOX 