New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced 15 steps to kickstart the economy in the first tranche of the government’s economic package Wednesday.
The measures are meant to facilitate credit flow to sectors like micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), non-banking finance companies and housing finance companies, as well as increase the cash-in-hand for organised sector workers and employers as part of the Rs 20-lakh crore economic package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tuesday night.
Sitharaman has played it very safe and her economic plan doesn’t require the government to spend an extra rupee. The government has postponed some payments and changed some definitions but there is nothing reckless about this plan, like some were expecting after Modi’s speech.
Left-oriented economists have been asking for big economics packages, but Modi has ensured there is no such recklessness. Having said that, the Modi government’s announcements puts money in the hands of people.
A lot more is needed like land and labour laws, but that may come through ordinances.
Also read: Fiscal damage from Modi govt’s big stimulus package to be less than Rs 50,000 crore this year
ICMR changes its mind, again
Health experts in-charge of dealing with Covid-19 were summoned in the US Senate and they were questioned about the details of the steps taken by the country’s government.
In India, we have the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to look up to. However, recent events puts their credibility in question.
The Delhi government had started plasma therapy trials and a lot of Tablighi-related patients were donating their plasma. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal invited everyone to donate plasma and had said antibodies don’t have religion.
This probably created a political problem and the health ministry then advised against plasma therapy. The ICMR, which is the apex medical research body in the country, didn’t stand up for science and suggested stopping plasma therapy trials even though it was only conducted on severe patients. Now, it has done a flip-flop and will conduct a large trial for plasma therapy.
India has nearly 25,000 recovered patients, and by now we should have had plasma for every blood group, but this process was stopped because everyone panicked.
Similarly, ICMR spoke against pool testing and antibody testing, but in another flip-flop, ICMR will now do a serological survey — that tests the blood serum of a group of individuals — using pool testing and antibody testing.
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