The Viral Impact: An Economy Lockdown
The Coronavirus has changed the world forever with lockdown leaving the hardest effect on all aspects of our lives and is likely to remain that way for the coming weeks and months. But the most evident and visible impact of the COVID crisis is on the economy of India with massive unemployment among laborers and workers belonging to society’s lower economic strata.
The damaging impact on India’s economy caused as the unemployment rate rose to 26.2 percent in the third week of April amid coronavirus lockdown. The report says “The employment rate has fallen from 40 percent in February to 26 percent now. This is a steep fall of 14 percentage points. This implies that 14 percent of the working-age population has lost employment.”
This means approx 14 crore people are expected to have lost employment in the lockdown period. Similarly, the rate of labor participation has plunged to 35.4 percent from 35.5 percent. The employment rate has now dipped to 26.1 percent as against 27 percent.
This was possibly a result of a decrease in demand for the workforce. Social distancing resulted in job losses, specifically those of Indian society’s lower economic strata. Several households terminated domestic help services — basically an unorganized monthly-paying job. All these are only expected to further hit the labor market conditions.
As is evident from the above, the impacts of COVID-19 on labor market statistics are very broad and constantly evolving, not all of which can yet be anticipated. Both Central Govt and State Govt are constantly working towards helping people while understanding their needs and providing adequate solutions as time demands. The government has launched various programs and campaigns to help sustain economically lower-class households, who have limited access to healthcare and other resources. Under the “Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana”, 312 billion Indian rupees were accrued and provided to around 331 million beneficiaries that included women, construction workers, farmers, and senior citizens.
In this pandemic scenario with rising unemployment, let’s put our best foot forward with sincere effort and effective solutions to help improve the economy of laborers and workers. We can achieve this by constructively working towards providing a secure environment and opportunity for people to work in their home-state; without the need of traveling far from their families in search of work.
To make India ATMANIRBHAR we need optimized solutions and decisive action to strengthen its economy. And by doing that we could appear as a global community by strengthening the future of India with opportunities to re-enable a million dreams hit by COVID.
