The package announced by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given great hope to his fan club. People are talking big about the potential of the package. People always talked great about his earlier decisions. He dramatizes everything. He vows and tries to eradicate every problem our country has been undergoing. He silently watches a problem for some time and then suddenly comes out with a high sounding solution. However, the problem becomes worse, and his solution becomes a new problem. Demonetization, doubling farmer’s income, creating jobs and skills, are but only a few examples. He tries to be magnanimous in his decisions, but with something Quixotic within. Demonetization as a solution to the problem of corruption and black money miserably failed and became a crisis in itself while corruption worsened which we have seen in increased cases of bank frauds. He came out with a series of solutions only to find India into worst financial mess and deepening economic crisis.

Our Prime Minister silently watched the corona situation for almost two months while moving the things with snail’s pace, and suddenly came out with announcement of lockdown on March 24. It was to hide his government’s failures in providing proper medical facilities in hospitals. It is now an admitted fact that the country under his leadership was not well equipped to find, track, and treat corona patients. Corona infection cases at that time were only about 500 with 10 deaths and less than 100 new cases on the previous day. Even now, at the end of the third phase of lockdown, India under his leadership is not well equipped to handle the corona crisis. In the beginning of fourth phase of lockdown, the country is most likely to have around 100,000 cases of infection, 3000 deaths, and daily new cases around 4000.

The lockdown was brought forward as a solution to the corona crisis which put complete brake on almost all economic activities with a daily loss of $4.64 billion and 800 million people facing near starvation situation. The solution has become a crisis in itself while the corona crisis worsened. Situation on May 18, will be far worse than the situation of March 24. Our hospitals at hotspots will be overwhelmed due to lack of medical facilities. India always demanded more doctors, nurses, hospitals, and medicines at affordable prices, but the government did not heed. Modi and his fan club refuse to see any fault in the solutions provided. They are going on blaming states and the people for not implementing ‘self-distancing’.

Rs 20 lakh crore package is very high sounding, one of the largest in the world. However, it is like a rose without its sweet smell. The dangers of corona are looming larger than ever before, and the package does not have the essentially required amount for providing medical facilities to all. The requirement of social distancing, migration of informal workers and stranded people, and the fear psychosis among the people has completely changed the demography of the country. No sector wise assessment of actual requirement has been done which underlines the vagueness and hollowness of the great package.

The package contains thousands of crore rupees for opening up industries, both small and big, but forgets to find out if sufficient number of workers is still there to work. During the Modi rule a large number of workers in the former sector of Indian economy have lost their jobs. A larger part of their works was being done by contract workers. Only a handful of workers were left in regular and secured jobs. Lockdown has made the deterioration complete. Workers on contract have completely lost their jobs. Large number of workers on permanent jobs have also lost their jobs. Workers in the informal sector, constituting about 90 per cent of the workforce have also lost their jobs. Millions of them have already left their working places and went to their homes.

The question is, how can an industry restart without required number of workers? The package will give money to the industries and business. And the money will not go in the hands of workers because they are not there to work. Workers going home has lately been increased due to opening up of railways and other relaxations in transport. They are not likely to return soon at the time when corona is spreading faster. Labour intensive industries will thus not be able to restart. In this scenario, industries may shift their focus on automation so that they can function with lesser number of workers. It will bring further deterioration in the labour market. Moreover, industries and business cannot fully open for several reasons including the lack of demand, because there is no money with the majority of people.

Modi’s package focuses on exploitation of land and labour so that upper layers of population may benefit. States are scraping the labour laws. It means there cannot be sufficient amount of money at the household level and they will be pushed close to economic slavery. The call for self-sufficient India is for the national level, not for the household level. We have already seen its ugly face in case of food-grains in which India has been self-sufficient at national level while millions of households do not have access to sufficient quantity of it. Self-sufficient India is a misnomer.

Since working class, who forms majority, is not at the core of the orientation of the package, it lacks the essence of well-being of the people and the economy. The package, thus, needs to be reworked on the basis of the new realities otherwise this solution will also bring new crises. (IPA Service)