CRISIS IN INDIA

Today the whole world is facing tremendous crisis due to the pandemic. It has been almost 6
months since India is confronting the situation of COVID-19. India is now within the top
three most affected country with coronavirus. Number of new COVID-19 positive cases in
India is almost 50000 plus daily. But amid this pandemic there are some other major
problems in our country which are affecting even more than the virus. Here I am talking
about the humanitarian crisis in our country. Humanitarian crisis is deemed to be at the
highest level in India in the last half century. This crisis includes several things like poverty,
homelessness, hunger, etc. These problems are being overlooked by many of us because
everyone is cared about the coronavirus.

The situation is so miserable that it seems that the progress achieved in the last 10-20 years in
the country is likely to be neutralised in this year. Several data of different organisations
reveals the same. According to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) data
COVID-19 pandemic will double the numbers of people facing food crisis unless swift action
is taken. It is estimated by WFP that about 265 million people in the low and middle income
countries will be in acute food insecurity by the end of 2020. WFP’s chief economist, Arif
Hussain said that ‘COVID-19 is potentially catastrophic for millions who are already hanging
by a thread. It is a hammer blow for the millions who can only eat if they earn a wage.’ Thus
there are countless indirect losses due to this pandemic. In India, we have witnessed the
migrant crisis and the sufferings of the migrant workers. Many migrant workers were forced
to go home by travelling hundreds of kilometres on foot to save their life during the national
lockdown. They had to face unimaginable hardships as the Central Government as well as
State Governments failed to take care of the lives and livelihoods. There are millions of
people in our country who even in normal times survived on the edge of hunger. That section
of society is facing tremendous difficulty even to survive in this situation. Many families in
India are dependent on the remittances from migrants for their survival. But now most of the
migrants have returned to their home and hence the burden of survival is even more. The
rural economy is facing huge crisis. Daily wage workers, home-based workers, rickshaw-
pullers have always lived on the edge of hunger. Today they are dying of starvation and due
the loss of livelihood. Those who were already facing hardship due to unemployment and
poverty are now totally aggrieved.
Another major problem is that there are millions of new entrants in the list of unemployment
and poverty. Employees of small enterprises, private school teachers, sex workers, etc. are
struggling to maintain their life. Many people have eliminated nutritious food items like milk,
fruits, meat, etc. from their diet because of unaffordability. Many have reduced their food
intake capacity. In our country, many children were earlier dependent on Mid-day meal for at
least one nutritious meal. Now because of the schools being closes, Mid-day meal has been
stopped. Those children who had been taken out from child labour and admitted to schools
have again been forced to work for their survival. According to the data of Oxfam, COVID-
19 will kill more people through hunger than from the disease. It is estimated that 122 million
more people may be pushed to starvation this year. These are the social and economic fallout
of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Government is not ready to admit its failure over these matters. New approach is expected
from the Government to deal with these issues. Government is diluting the labour laws
because they believe it will attract capital investment. But Government should maintain
balance between both. Neither the labours should be affected badly not the capital
investment. Many state Governments attempted to increase the workday to 12 hours. Taking
advantage of the situation, few State Governments are abolishing the labour laws. State like
Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh suspended the protection of labour laws for three years.
They have nothing to do with the workers’ interest. The sufferings and pain are that much
which cannot be covered in figures and words.

Rajeev Ranjan @ Samacharline