Covid isn’t a natural calamity. From WHO to Rahul Gandhi, all warned Modi govt: Sharad Yadav

The coronavirus pandemic has impacted economies around the world, and India will have to do much more to restart its economy, says Loktantrik Janata Dal president.

A file image of Sharad Yadav | Facebook

The Narendra Modi government was unprepared to fight the coronavirus pandemic in spite of the alert from the World Health Organization. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had convened a meeting of the International Health Regulations, 2005, Emergency Committee regarding the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in China “with exportations reported in Korea, Japan, Thailand and Singapore” on 22 January 2020.

The role of the WHO committee is to advise its 194 member countries, which includes India, when a public health emergency of international concern has been determined and make formal recommendations. The committee held its second meeting on the coronavirus on 30 January, the day India reported its first positive case in Kerala. The WHO noted: “It was believed that it would be possible to interrupt virus spread provided that countries put in place strong measures to detect disease early, isolate and treat cases, trace contacts and promote social distancing measures commensurate with the risk. The Committee agreed that the outbreak now met the criteria for a Public Health Emergency of International concern”.

And yet the Modi government didn’t take necessary action when it needed to.

On 11 March 2020, the WHO, “deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by alarming levels of inaction”, characterised Covid-19 “as a pandemic”. The WHO had never used the word ‘pandemic’ before except for influenza. I do not know whether the Modi government followed the advice of WHO but an alarm had been raised by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as early as 12 February 2020, but it was not taken seriously.

Finally on 24 March 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a sudden and unplanned nationwide lockdown. It’s clear by now that the most suffered lot has been the migrant workers along with students and those who had gone to other places for some work but were left stranded.

Besides asking people to stay in their homes, it was necessary for PM Modi to announce that the migrants should stay wherever they were and their needs will be taken care of by the establishment with whom they were working, while the companies would be compensated.

With regards to daily wagers and other poor people, the respective state governments should have made separate arrangements with all safety protocols prescribed during the lockdown. Similarly, the students must also have been sent to their hometowns with due precautions immediately after imposing the lockdown. But nothing of the sort was done.

Late start followed by missteps

Due to the sudden and unplanned lockdown, workers employed in factories, small establishments, showrooms, and retail shops have faced the extreme brunt of it. Because they didn’t have any place to stay without work, they began the journey to their homes, some on foot, some on cycle rickshaws without caring if they would find food. There was total chaos insofar as handling the affairs of migrant workers was concerned.

This was soon followed by confusion among states as some wanted to bring students and migrants back while some, like Bihar, said travelling would defeat the purpose of the lockdown that had been imposed. On 22 April, I tweeted that the Modi government “should take the responsibility of sending students and migrant workers back to their homes in special trains and buses”.  I have been repeating this in my tweets and statements since.

Ultimately, everything I have said from the day the Janata Curfew was imposed on 22 March stands vindicated. It is better late than never that the Modi government has taken a decision to start special trains.  These workers must be taken care of during the period of lockdown because they are the engines of our economy.

The coronavirus pandemic has impacted economies around the world, and India will have to do much more than others to restart its economy. But I don’t accept that it was a natural calamity for the country because there was a considerable delay in suspending incoming international flights and imposing the lockdown. Had the flights been suspended on 1 February 2020, India would have had only one Covid-19 positive case to deal with and trace all those with whom the people might have come in contact. As for the nationwide lockdown, the government should have given people a day or two before announcing it.

What Modi govt must do

The big task before the government now is to revive industry and service sectors and restart every economic activity in the country. The owners of MSMEs, showrooms, shops and other establishments are finding it difficult to pay salaries and remunerations to their staff as there was zero earning for them during the lockdown.

Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan recently said in a video chat with Rahul Gandhi that the government could release Rs 65,000 crore for the welfare of poor people and it is not a huge amount out of our GDP of Rs 200 lakh crore. I appreciate this idea and believe it should be done. The need of the hour is to infuse in as much money as possible into the market so that the spending is can be started, which will then help all sectors of the economy.

The Modi government should not worry about the fiscal deficit right now, which economists have been saying since the start of the slowdown. As some economists have said, an increase of 1.5 per cent in fiscal deficit will amount to Rs 3.5 lakh crore. Nevertheless, I believe the government should consider infusing cash into the financial system. I am not an economist but I am given to understand that this seems possible.

What shouldn’t be done, however, is levy Covid-19 cess on liquor and increase the petrol and diesel prices, as Haryana is planning to do. It will not be fair or a correct way to handle the post-lockdown economic situation. It will break the back of common citizens because a hike in the prices of petrol and diesel will increase the prices of almost all commodities.

The Modi government should roll out a complete financial package for the revival of the economic activities and compensation to the farmers and poor people like migrant workers. States have lost considerable revenue during the period of lockdown and doing anything that affects spending powers of the people will make the economic revival more difficult.

I am given to understand that the Modi government is comparing India’s number of Covid-19 cases with Western countries rather than Sri Lanka, Nepal and other neighbouring countries in order to decide the correct time to lift the lockdown. The time has come to end the lockdown and re-start economic activities with safety protocols. In fact, it should have been done on 3 May instead of extending it for another two weeks.

Sharad Yadav is former Union minister and seven-time member of Lok Sabha and four-time member of Rajya Sabha. He is the president of Loktantrik Janata Dal. Views are personal.