ZK Pahrü Pou
Mission Colony, Pfutsero
Initially, Covid-19 is known as the sickness of the rich as they travel to different places and get infected. Gradually, the poor became the most affected group of people by it. The quick imposition of various restrictions to contain the spread of Coronavirus and the lackadaisical of both the state and central governments in tackling poverty makes life miserable for the poor. While the poor people’s life and livelihood are badly affected the rich people have disproportionately amassed wealth. India is not a resource poor country but the available resources are been grabbed by the state to spawn millionaires and billionaires at the expense of mass poverty.
The Face of Poverty in India: India claims that it is becoming a super power country globally and that its economy can attain growth of 9 to 10 percent. Amid these tall claims around 80% of Indians do not get enough food to survive. 43% of Indian children and 40% of women are malnourished. 50% of child deaths are due to malnutrition and 77% of Indians live on less than Rs 20 a day. In the same vein, the Global Hunger Index compiled by the International Food Policy Research Institute, India ranks 101st out of the 116 countries in 2021. From 1995 to 2021, around 400,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide as they find difficult to adjust with the fast marketised economic system. However, the government has money for the rich corporate sector as it provides tax exemptions and rebates of over Rs 5 lakh crore, majorly to the corporate sectors. The latest example of such tax exemption is the tax deductions for Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Research Foundation Trust for five years (2021-2025). India opened and liberalized its markets by creating reforms, reducing tariff barriers, privatizing their economies, and, after time, opening up capital markets. This is how millionaires and billionaires are made in India while the masses struggle for daily basic needs.
The Misery of the Poor: On March 24, 2020, Modi appeared on television and announced a 21-day lockdown with four hours’ notice. Arundhati Roy said, “A mass migration began - biblical in its scale.” Millions of workers and their families began walking thousands of miles home to their village. On the way, they were beaten by the police, hosed down, killed by trains as they walked on railway tracks, held in containment camps. Over 8,700 people were mowed down on railway tracks in 2020 even though passenger train services were severely curtailed due to the nationwide Coronavirus lockdown. Based on the information received from the State Police, 805 people suffered injuries, and 8,733 people died on the railway track between January 2020 and December 2020. Probably the death of thousands goes unreported or unnoticed. According to the Pew Research Center, the Covid-19 pandemic has had a disproportionately harmful impact on living standards in India, with the sharp economic contraction pushing as many as 7.5 crore people into the ranks of the poor (those who earn $2 or less a day). Unemployment of women rose by 15% from a pre-lockdown level of 18 %, resulting in a loss of India’s GDP of about 8 % or Rs 15 trillion.
The Fortune of the Rich: During the pandemic, the wealthiest escaped the worst impact of the pandemic while the poor faced joblessness, starvation and death. According to Oxfam Report, Indian billionaires increased their wealth by 35% during the lockdown. Indian billionaires increased their wealth by 35% during the lockdown to Rs 3 trillion. Mukesh Ambani earned Rs 90 crore an hour during pandemic when around 24% of people in India were making under Rs 3,000 a month. Out of these, the rise in fortunes for the top 100 billionaires since the lockdown in March is enough to give every one of the 138 million poorest Indian people a cheque for Rs 94,045 each, according to Oxfam’s ‘Inequality Virus Report’. The wealth of the top 11 billionaires during the pandemic could easily sustain the MGNREGS or the Health Ministry for the next ten years. The increase in wealth of Mukesh Ambani alone could keep 40 crore informal workers out of poverty for at least five months, said the report. According to the Hurun India Wealth Report in 2020 there are a whopping 4, 12,000 dollar millionaire households in India. Mumbai lead the list of places with the most number of millionaire-households at 16, 933 closely followed by New Delhi- 16,000. There is a massive gap in wealth distribution among Indians.
Anna Marriott, a member of The People’s Vaccine Alliance said that the pharmaceutical industry’s monopoly Covid-19 vaccines had generated a massive increase in wealth for a handful of people in the world. The global push to develop a vaccine for Covid-19 has spawned nine new “vaccine billionaires” who have amassed a combined net wealth of $19.3 billion. Eight existing billionaires, who have extensive portfolios in the Covid-19 vaccine pharma corporations have seen their combined wealth increased by $32.2 billion. The Indian healthcare and pharmaceutical sector saw the emergence of seven new billionaire promoters in 2020. India now has 17 billionaire promoters in the sector, up from 10 last year.
The combined wealth of these 17 billionaires surged by 61% or Rs 1.65 lakh crore or $23 billion. These billionaire promoters cumulatively held Rs 4.35 lakh crore or $60 billion at the end of December 2020. These billionaires are the human face of the huge profits many pharmaceutical corporations make from the monopoly they hold on these vaccines. These vaccines become a private profit opportunity.
Government negligent attitude towards the poor: Despite the urgency to fight against the pandemic and poverty, the central government shows indifferent attitude towards the poor by diverting its financial and material resources towards other purposes. Given below are the some of the evidences.
PM Cares: Despite the existence of the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF), with an unused corpus of Rs 3,800.44 crore (as of 2019) on March 28, 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the creation of a separate fund to deal with COVID-19, the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance, and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES). Modi established the PM CARES fund and solicited donations for it from institutions, organizations and individuals (especially govt. employees). A recent analysis by India Spend estimated that at least Rs 9,677.90 crore has been collected in the PM CARES fund so far. Of this, Rs 4,308 crore has been donated by government agencies and staff. Yet, the only announcement to be made to date about the usage of the funds is the allocation of Rs 3,100 crore for Covid-19 work. An estimated 12.2 crore have lost jobs since the lockdown was announced but no funds from PM CARES were allocated to create jobs for them. With the fund not benefitting the people who needed help, many people are questioning whether the PM cares with the fund called PM Cares.
Military Spending: Narendra Modi’s government is obsessed with nationalism and militarisation, investing a huge amount in military spending. Although it has no enough money for building health infrastructure all over the country, the government has money for defence budget. In the current financial year 2021-2022, the Narendra Modi government has allocated Rs 4,78,196 crore of defence expenditure which is 13.73 per cent of the total central government expenditure. According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), global GDP shrank 4.4% because of the pandemic, but global military spending rises 2.6% (about $1,981 billion) in 2020 from 2.2% in 2019 despite the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Global military expenditure rose to $1.98 trillion.
Central Vista Project: The BJP government is also found of building statues, stadia and monuments for its glorification. This government is stubbornly going ahead with the Central Vista Project when the nation suffers from the second wave of Coronavirus, with lakh of active Covid-19 cases and thousands dying every day. The new Central Vista Project will be built at an estimated cost of Rs 20,000 crore, and the cost of the new Parliament building alone is Rs 971 crore. On May 5, 2021, The Daily Mail UK said that despite millions suffer in the pandemic, India’s egotistic Prime Minister is building a vast folly at a cost that could fund 40 major hospitals. India has only 8 doctors per 10,000 people. Its health expenditure is a mere 3.7 per cent of the GDP which is the least among the BRICS countries.
Conversion of Rice to ethanol: Amid millions of poor people facing starvation and death during the pandemic, the central government diverts rice for ethanol production. Reportedly the Centre government has allocated 78,000 tonnes of Food Corporation of India rice procured for food security purposes for ethanol production at a subsidized rate of Rs 20 per kg. This is part of the Centre government’s commitment of giving three lakh tonnes of rice under Food Corporation of India toward ethanol production. The decision to allow rice conversion to ethanol can have a severe effect on the poor when food insecurity has grown across the country as millions have lost their livelihoods due to Covid-19. When there are fears of a steep fall in national income, a rise in unemployment, and an increase in food inflation due to supply bottlenecks, food security and food price stability must be prioritized.
Welfare for Cows: Many states in India have great concern for cows while neglecting the survival needs of millions of people. The Bengal’s BJP chief Dilip Ghosh had said that protection of cow is vital as drinking cow urine was a sure way of protecting oneself against Covid-19. The Akhil Bhartiya Hindu Mahasabha organised a ‘party’ and collectively drank cow urine to ‘neutralise’ the effects of Coronavirus in India. Even before the pandemic, in 2019, former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, said that cows are the only animal which can inhale and exhale oxygen. Proximity to a cow would cure breathing problems and even tuberculosis. In Uttar Pradesh, the Adityanath government, according to the agency report, has directed that Covid-19 protocols be maintained at all cow shelters, including stocks of equipment like oximeters and thermal scanners “for cows and other animals as well”. IANS has reported that in Uttar Pradesh, 4,64,311 cows are housed in 4,529 temporary shelters, and 5,73,417 cows in 5,268 shelters. The order comes while Uttar Pradesh, along with most of India, suffers from escalating Covid-19 numbers, crippling shortage of medical supplies, and thousands of people living in the open places as they have no shelter. Monthly stipend of Rs 900 per cow is promised by UP CM Yogi. Much attention is given to cow but not to the health and welfare of the poor population. Incredible India!
Rising fuel price: With fuel prices skyrocketing, daily wage earners who make their living ferrying goods or people throughout India, have been hit hard. In many states, the price of petrol had crossed Rs 100 per litre. The central government justified the high cost of fuel saying that they are collecting tax for Covid-19 pandemic and welfare scheme. However, the high tax collected by central and state government on petroleum product have put huge burden on million households who are low earners such as taxi and auto drivers, vegetable vendors, food deliverer, wage labourers and others. Governments could have reduced fuel prices by stopping many mega-projects and military spending and give more attention to the plight of million households who are struggling economically under the impact of Covid-19 pandemic.
Conclusion: The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic has badly affected the economy of the most impoverished populace of India. There is a risk of increased hunger and food chain disruption. The livelihoods of workers in unorganized sectors, small farmers, tribal, adivasis, dalits, and women are at stake making them vulnerable to the outbreak of epidemic. The supply of safe and healthy foods needs to be safeguarded on urgent basis. The rich people especially the billionaires should be taxed to help the poor and also to contain the pandemic. We need leaders who have a kind heart towards the poor and not leaders who continue to enrich the millionaires and billionaires. We need a government that protects the country’s resources for the poor and not the government that sells country’s resources to the rich. We need a government that provides basic needs to the poor and not the government that invest only in building palaces. Let humanity prevails.
