Doors of opportunity for “Locked Down India”
The world is witnessing a pandemic that has changed and affected the way how things worked in all extreme says possible. A pandemic which has put people into their homes, workplaces are shut, movements are curbed and there is no surety about when things are going to be or if they ever will be “normal” again. Economies have slumped and unemployment is at unprecedented levels.
The hardest hits are the migrant laborers stuck in various parts of the country. They have lost their jobs and they are losing the hope of revival by every passing day. They are desperate to return to their villages, to their families. Host states don’t seem willing to take the burden of “outsiders” on their own, making the laborers feel “vulnerable” at this critical juncture. Some panicked and set on foot for their homes which are thousands of miles away. Central government has now realized the uncertainty and is trying to work out the logistics of sending these migrant laborers back to their home states.
The laborers, students and tourists are being brought back steadily using special trains and buses according to the guidelines issued by the home ministry.
The current scenario in front of states like UP and Bihar, with very high population density and limited fiscal resources is unique and challenging as these states have the significant number of repatriates’ working outside the state. Bringing them back and then providing them with employment is going to be Herculean task, if not accomplished can led to chaos, poverty, law and order problems as these states don’t have the fiscal resources enough to feed them for long.
The states now need to focus on employment generation at mass level and majority of this employment needs to be physical in nature as most of the laborers are unskilled. What’s the way forward, what needs to be done in a situation where two powerful enemies, the Pandemic and the resultant unemployment are knocking at the door at the same time?
But as it’s said, every crisis brings an opportunity, so there must be one here too.
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A lot of us have wondered at least once about comparison between India and China. India and China got independence at approx the same time and their economies had remained similar in size till 80s. Then both countries liberalised their economies, and now China’s economy is almost 5 times that of India’s. What are the factors that changed China’s fortune while India missed out?
Of course China has an authoritarian system of governance but there was another factor which made the most of the difference, China had “strengthened its roots” before taking the plunge into globalisation.
What I mean by “strengthening the roots” is simple and obvious, it’s Human Resource Development. Before embracing globalisation, China had its citizens, healthy, literate and skilled enough to take over all the manufacturing jobs that came to China due to cheap man force and easy business. It basically became the “Factory of the world”, providing employment to the extra man powerthat was taken out of agriculture during the 1980s Agricultural Reforms.
The story of Indian Liberalisation is completely different. It was hastily planned due to the dire situation of its economy. The Indian Government was forced to take that route under the pressure from IMF . We didn’t have our agriculture sector reformed, neither we had the skilled and educated workforce, our healthcare and social security systems were not efficient. We tried to copy the East Asian models for long without any significant gains.
The time has come for India to write its own story. We lost the opportunity back then but we must not be missing out this time though. We have a decisive leadership at the top; we have the digital infrastructure at the ground. We are positioned in a very unique place and we must use this opportunity to consolidate our base. No economy will be “judged” for fiscal slippages in the period of 3 years at least. So the money must be arranged and utilised well.
What the central and states government must prepare for is a new “normal” which is taking over at an unprecedented pace. There needs to be a complete overhaul of the economic policies, India was following which favoured investments into cities rather than villages that led to migration of rural populace towards cities resulting in overcrowding of cities, a migraine of sorts in these times.
Flip the policy; Let private investments do the work in cities by commercialising the basic services, pump the public money into rural areas. Provide jobs, education, skill and healthcare to people where they live. Make villages self sustaining. Strengthen the local government bodies by providing them with resources while making them accountable at the same time.
In the follow up articles we will be discussing the reforms needed in the most crucial sectors. The focus of the next two articles will be on Health Care and social security which is the immediate requirement and then we will move onto Agriculture, Construction and MSMEs which will ensure “speedy employment generation” so that masses don’t slide back into the poverty trap again. Then we will move forward to the education and skill development.
