Not Just Coronavirus, India’s 2nd Big Battle is Economic Pandemic

Yeh Jo India Hai Na, it is fighting a second big battle – and that is an economic pandemic.

Visuals from Pune show the railway station packed with people, with bigger worries than social distancing. And pictures from a bus stand in Kolkata show thousands of workers desperate to get back to their villages. They are waiters at restaurants that are shut, housekeeping staff at offices that are shut, loaders of goods at factories that are shut. They’ve been told, ‘Daftar, hotel, factory... sab band, salary nahi hai, ghar jaao. Do-teen mahine ke baad dekhenge. (Offices, hotels, factories... all are closed, there’s no salary, go home. We will reconsider it after two-three months.)’

Now multiply this scenario for industrial cities and big metros across India. Across Mumbai, Delhi, Gurgaon, Chennai, Coimbatore, Kochi, Surat, Ahmedabad, Ludhiana, Noida, Kanpur, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mangalore, lakhs of them, suddenly with no jobs, heading back to their villages – the direct and immediate result of the coronavirus lockdown. An additional worry: If any of them are positive cases of coronavirus, then this exodus from the cities, is one sure way of the pandemic spreading to rural India.

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Host: Rohit Khanna

Editors: Sandeep Suman, Varun Sharma Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices