Kunal Saini, Alisha Luthra
The world was living on with its challenges, life wasn’t still. But nobody had anticipated the turn 2020 will bring in their lives. This time it wasn’t the radioactive fat man dropped in the middle of night but a microscopic virus which would introduce man to a panopticon of problems with no exit. This time it was the spread of a disease which knew no national boundaries and has brought everything to a standstill.
The gloom once again takes over amidst the lockdown being extended. While people are struggling to deal with their basic amenities being fulfilled, there are some who still need to be saved. India a country of spanned classes is currently struggling with the predicament of whom to save first, the suffering or the ones who are about to suffer. Despite there being extraordinary minds at display, nobody seems to be concerned about the lower middle classes. Walking down the lanes on usual days we walk past numerous of them, who we believe to have existed in there, since generations of their families. The small shop owners, those optical shops or the small booths we went to every now and then for mobile recharges.
It is not my intention to disparage the way the crisis is being dealt with or to say the way the poor are being fed. Instead my sole inclination is to point in the direction, we haven’t been thinking about. What about the ones who don’t hold a ration card but will be soon out of funds? What about that small shop owners who even though could afford minimal luxuries would now be left in a disparaging situation difficult enough to manage three basic meals a day?
It is pertinent for us to mention that these are the people surviving on the fault lines. They are the ones who are neither the holder of BPL ration cards nor capable of a fixed and definite income, without savings enough to keep the lamps burning. The little they may have is invested in matter and materials which is now lying in dumps.
When all is shut and all is dwindling at an unprecedented pace it is necessary to evaluate our situation. Enormous government schemes, all lined up at the time of Covid-19 range from feeding the poor to the old. Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package, relief package aims at feeding the poor with essential food supplies, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee and National Rural Livelihood Mission on the other hand, each target on transferring small amounts to the bank accounts of the below poverty families. Apart from these we have farmers being front-loaded and paid under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Yojna to widows, single women account holders and the Divyang category being paid substantively under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package. Thus, each provide for the rural sector to get an upward push amidst this financial stoop. However, the future still holds bleak for, a middle class factory owner who had managed to collect enough to get his daughters married but is now struggling to feed more than 5 heads as his workers merely by sitting home, which is accorded as a privilege among this financial stoop.
The small businesses are the worst hit, although governments across the globe have started acting out, Indian businesses are still hanging seeking all the help they can from the government. An alarming number of 42.5million SME’s (Small and Middle class Enterprises) in India to a 5.9million SME’s in UK, UK has managed to announce an interest free loan of up to a 5m for those with an annual turnover of 45m in a primary response to the shattering middle class businesses. Brazil too on the other hand has pitched a 6 billion fund from the Ministry of Regional Development for the small entrepreneurs, cooperatives and Informal’s to apply for new line of credits. While countries like Brazil and Canada hold ground for strong measures for job security and unemployment through ‘The Emergency Program for Maintenance and Income’, India is struggling with no measures to tackle the sparing unemployment we’re headed towards considering the gradual downward finances the middle classes are dealing with.
The Press Information Bureau had recorded an expected GDP growth rate to be between 6-6.5% as per the Economic Survey of 2020-21. Further, the impact of external debt to the ratio of GDP in India stood at 20.01% in December 2019. In consideration to the above, a fallout to a 4.7%- 5.1% in the March quarter to a 2.5%-2.9% in the June quarter is an alarming percentage for us to expect that the SME’s will be hit by a downward crunch of 50%. In case the situation prevails, the Government will be expected to bear the extended salary cost of the workers of SME’s. While we see no immediate measure at hand, it is highly skeptical that the SME’s will be able to bear salary costs along with the extended tax slabs in this financial crisis. World around we are seen as huge market places, often criticized for lacking the export. But the conclusion that we are an economy of consumers places us probably in a better position than the rest of the world. Knowing that we consume what we produce means that we can survive better than others, in a land gifted with its own resources our reliance on the rest of the world is relatively less.
Even if all doors are shut and transportation gone we can take care of ourselves, long enough to survive this. What may be a way ahead will be to see sustenance of these small places as running units in themselves, relying upon each other whilst surviving on what is locally available. At the same time reduction or unification of tax slabs for enterprises and companies looks like a conducive measure for the current economic crisis, a future crisis could be averted by resorting to bulk payout measures to small enterprises. However these payout measures that we look forward should not come as freebies for all but in a manner that bridges and helps to reduce the fallout, while helping the SME’s to sustain the survival. It is only by acceptance of the problem for SME’s at hand and dealing with a holistic approach, we can prolong the survival of all and see ourselves in better place than the rest, with the ones.
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