India on Thursday announced a second stimulus package of $13 billion to help small and medium enterprises that have borne the brunt, thanks to the lockdown put by the centre to battle the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.
At the end of March, India had outlined a $22.6 billion relief plan to provide direct cash transfers and food security measures to help the poor.
This means that in all, India has issued a relief package of $35 billion (approximately 2.6 lakh crore for 130 crore people in the country). If we didn’t know where the money was going – to help the poor or for small and medium enterprises, and the money was equally distributed amongst all, then each Indian would receive Rs 2,000 each, which would be the average daily wage of a labourer working for seven continuous days. In addition to this, PM Modi also announced Rs 15,000 crore to battle the coronavirus.
In comparison, the city states of Hong Kong and Singapore have announced that they would be rolling out $25 billion and $38 billion respectively. Singapore divided the relief package into two parts – a $4.4 billion package at the beginning and more recently a $33.7 billion package.
Germany meanwhile has launched a €750 billion relief package, while Japan has rolled out a $ 1 trillion package. Both Thailand and Malaysia launched a $58 billion relief package, while Bangladesh, which has 218 reported cases, has put out $8 billion relief package.
These numbers once again puts forth India’s lack of spending on its healthcare sector. India spends 1.02 per cent of its GDP on public health. This means that India’s per capita (for each individual) public expenditure on healthcare increased from Rs 621 in 2009-10 to Rs 1,112 in 2015-16. And while budget numbers may sound big, the reality is that India’s public health infrastructure has always been fragile.
Lockdown extension
The 21-day lockdown is supposed to end on April 14, but most state governments have already reached out to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting that the lockdown be extended till April 30. As of today, India has reported 5,916 cases, which include 178 deaths and 506 recoveries.
India’s numbers are likely to increase, given that the state and central governments have just started testing aggressively, given the spike in the number of cases.
The lockdown has had a serious impact on the economy, and while everyone has justified that it is the need of the hour, the Reserve Bank of India on Thursday reiterated that conditions thanks to the lockdown remained highly uncertain and said it is refraining from providing any projections on GDP growth. Industrialists such as Ravi Bajaj have also voiced their displeasure at the total lockdown, stating that it is bad for business.
Chief Ministers, too, feel that PM Modi should have consulted them before issuing a lockdown. Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel said in an interview with the Hindu that the displacement of lakhs could have been avoided had PM Modi first consulted state governments.
Should India have managed it better? There is a section that has hailed the way state governments like Kerala and Maharashtra have functioned. Others have hailed the Centre’s management of the situation, given the poor set of resources that it has in front of it. However, the Central government is to be blamed for this. Despite the public health sector being fragile and diseases like tuberculosis, dengue, malaria and Japanese encephalitis plaguing millions of Indians every year, governments – the present and the past – have not changed the way they have budgeted healthcare. And even with the COVID-19 pandemic looking to spike up India’s numbers in the next few weeks, one can only hope that the government learns from this.
