The start of the Corona pandemic saw many countries go into lock-down mode with a varying results. But what did become clear was that since we are comparing lives to livelihoods, it is hard to make an honest and unbiased analysis of the efficacy of lock-downs. On one hand, it is evident that lock-downs do save lives by controlling the spread of the disease. But on the other hand, the number of lives saved must be stacked up against the effect of lost income and livelihoods for the most vulnerable in society.
Many people live on the brink of poverty and it usually takes just a tiny jerk to push them over the edge into poverty. The reverse, bringing people out of poverty, requires a lot more effort. In the last two decades (2000 - 2019), India pulled a record 273 million people out of poverty. The very same UN report also indicates that as much as 50% of the people could be pushed back into poverty as a result of the pandemic. So effectively, the pandemic and our response to it (read lock-downs) have set us back by a decade at least.
So am I advocating against lock-downs? Not really. I am just calling out the fact that we seem to alarmingly unprepared to respond to such jerks to our national development trajectory.
Let us take allowing only essential services during a lock-down. Food stuff and medicines are considered essential services. Vehicles transporting these are allowed to move across states transporting their payloads from manufacturer or grower to wholesalers and retailers. However, the truckers need food and resting places along the way, but the essential-services umbrella does not cover restaurants, hotels, and vehicle mechanics.
Then the other big thing during the lock-down - work-from-home. But what happens if you drop your phone and crack your screen or the keyboard on your laptop stops working? Neither mobile service centers nor computer hardware sellers come under the essential-services umbrella.
These two scenarios show how difficult it is to even keep something as limited in scope as essential services going.
What we need are detailed plans in case of such disasters that can kick in and ensure least disruption to the life of the person on the ground.
The one big lesson we learned from the lock-down is that the prosperity of the last two decades rests on wafer-thin foundations. A small jerk is sufficient to crack it and send a huge number of people tumbling back into poverty. In the meanwhile, our government has been chasing shadows such as black money, illegal immigrants, and anti-national NGOs. Even more worrying is how democratic norms are thrown into the wind. The government seems to be focused on how they can stay unaccountable to the citizenry by setting up funds that cannot be audited or allowing the PM by never facing the press.
Sadly, there seems to be no easy fix in sight. The opposition continues to be weak and confused. The government in power seems too focused on their right-wing policies. The bottom line for the common person is that nobody seems to care of real governance or even a semblance of it.
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