Fighting With An Invisible Enemy

‘As for any of us in crisis, hope is the only thing … and that’s everything’
-Swati Kumari

Since past few months, there have been innumerable debates, discussions and deliberations on the ongoing bleeding economic and humanitarian crisis. Its impact can be noted in round-about all the sectors, thereby adversely affecting the life of individual and groups in every aspect and sphere. It ranges in the vicinity from education-employment-entertainment, from farmers-financers-film industry, from government think tanks-guides-gatherings, from markets-migrants-mercantile trades, and from hotels-hospitals-hill stations resulting into tectonic reactions in the economy at large.

Migrant workers: Caught in rising tide
Pandemic Covid-19 has created a battle between lives and livelihoods. Be it because of job-loss, uncertain shelter, lack of food & social security and negligible savings, migrant workers and daily wage laborers have suffered the most. Their bare-footed long-distance cover in scotching heat has added-on to their pre-existing miserable conditions.
When it comes to saving their lives and livelihoods in crisis, almost all the (ir)responsible state governments failed in understanding their heightened pain and in providing much needed prompt recovery measures. But amidst all this, Orissa government has been a model state and did praiseworthy job in terms of managing and protecting migrant workers of/in the state. It established a migrant support center for workers and with numerous underlying steps incorporated comprehensively; it showed an exemplary model of strong co-operative- competitive system of the state to protect the human rights of these integral, yet highly ignored section of the society.

It’s high time such significant migrant population is wisely considered by the policymakers while framing socio-economic map of India.

Liquidity Crisis and the RBI:
With continuous lockdown of more than 2 months, there occurred a liquidity crisis both in the consumers’ as well as producers’ market. To address that, Rs 20 Lakh crore stimulus package was announced last month by the Ministry of Finance, which majorly comprised of indirect financial assistance way of loans. Apart from that, RBI has also announced continuous policy rate cut. Repo rate which currently stands at 4% has been cut during lockdown by 115 basis points. Reverse repo rate has also been brought down to 3.35%. Besides some additional measures have also been undertaken by the RBI to ensure liquidity in market, such as-

• In order to ensure that the benefits of policy rate cut is passed on to customers, in a recent circular issued by RBI, all the scheduled commercial banks have been advised to introduce the system w.e.f. 1st July 2020, in which interest to be charged on all new floating rate personal or retail loans will be linked to any External Benchmark Rate as per the choice of banks.
• RBI also permitted the lending institutions to extend moratorium for another three months i.e. till August 31, 2020, and decided to keep IS (Interest Subvention) 2% and PRI (Prompt Repayment Incentive) 3% (it was to ensure farmers do not have heavy burden of increased interest) to farmers for all short term loans to agriculture and Animal Husbandry, Dairy and Fishing [AHDF] up to ₹ 3 lakh.
• Also, amid wave of uncertainties being witnessed by the debt and capital market segment, corporates are facing difficulties in raising funds. So, RBI has decided to allow fund flows to corporates and increased bank exposure to group of corporates from 25% to 30%, applicable till 30 June 2021.
• To meet the financial requirement of government, RBI issued government securities worth Rs 30,000 crores.

MSME –backbone of Indian economy:
MSMEs have the potential to create bulk employment as well as explore export avenues. The recent pitch of ‘Local to Global’ and ‘Vocal for Local’ was in the same direction. Recent announcements made in regard to MSMEs to increase its future hope and scope is indeed a good decision directed towards the same motive of increasing employment, export opportunities and encouraging investment.

Affordable banking services to the recognized MSMEs through cluster-based lending is expected to provide a full-service approach to cater to the need of MSMEs. Banks will be benefitted in dealing with well identified/defined groups, availability of sufficient information for risk assessment, performance of monitoring task by lending institute and reduction in intermediary costs. There have been 388 clusters in 21 states identified by United Nations Industrial Development Organisations [UNIDO]. Subsequently, Ministry of MSMEs has approved list of cluster districts under the scheme of fund for regeneration of traditional industries and MSME-Cluster Development Programme located in 212 minor concentrated districts.

Taking a step towards digitization:
Digitally independent economy is the future of work and this pandemic has made us realise its significance. If India really wishes to uplift digitally, it needs reassessment and reforms at the grass root level itself. Taking the case of education sector, particularly engineering field, transformed curriculum, teaching patterns and application-based knowledge should replace traditional teaching-studying patterns of 1990’s curricular.
To meet up to the current demand of employers, courses like software-development, relationship branding, artificial intelligence, data mining etc. must be incorporated in the syllabi. In fact, students should be made familiar to these streamed subjects at the school level itself, so that they can appropriately pursue the subjects of their interests. Besides, we also need to develop an integrated data storage center to protect and encapsulate data from all departments.

Misinformation spreads like wild-fire:
Crisis brings sum of intuitions and blind spots, a blend of facts noted and facts ignored. When there is panic in the air, we should refrain ourselves from spreading unreliable news, misinformation, disinformation, hate-messages and rumors without checking their reliability. Some rumors and totally unrelated videos related to communally sensitive issues, fake news about food supply shortage, videos advocating unauthorized drugs to prevent Covid-19 etc. were doing rounds across the country. Checking the credibility of the news and verifying it from multiple sources can be a small but effective step taken at individual level in this battle.
Secondly, for the authentic information, recognised national and international authorities should be the primary source of information. By keeping that in mind, three ‘Ts’ can be beneficial i.e.
• TRANSPARENCY is the key to communication. Information should not be forged, manipulated or hidden.
• TRUST must be cultivated in internal and external stakeholders of society; otherwise desired results may not be attained.
• TOGETHERNESS is about team work and free flow of communication. Everyone has the potential to lead the march and every action counts. It can be only with interconnectedness, cooperation and coordination that we can create changes at larger scale.

Conclusion:
Every little thing counts in a crisis and the secret to crisis management is not only goods vs bad, but preventing the bad from getting worst. After a lot of brainstorming, government released rules and guidelines for unlocking the economy in a phased manner. However, the question of whether this step was appropriate or not will be better answered by time. But the fight with this lethal virus should not be misconstrued as the fight of only government, health workers, police and bankers. It’s the fight of whole mankind and has to be fought even at individual level. Till the time any specific vaccine or medicine is not developed, this has to be fought with collective patience, harmony, generosity and optimism.

(Writer is a student of Allahabad University and Member of Finance and Economics Think Council)