A bullet train to hunger
The Hindu
The pandemic has highlighted the importance of expanding social security nets
Pinki is a 28-year-old Dalit woman from Saharanpur, U.P. Her husband met with an accident during the national lockdown in April 2020. The two of them had to sell all their belongings for his treatment and subsequently became dependent on her parents. Such avoidable miseries were heaped on millions due to the unilateral national lockdown in 2020. The monthly report from the Finance Ministry in October stated, “From a trickle in not so distant past to now a sea of humanity coming out on the streets, the people of India have embraced the new normal where self-protection is inseparable from economic activity.” It attempts to poetically celebrate the spirit of resilience among the people by alluding to “self-protection” by shying away from the government’s responsibility of social protection. The experience for the poor is a kind of syndemic: a juxtaposition of the healthcare crisis due to the pandemic and the daily precarity of having to deal with hunger and uncertainty about livelihoods. As per the State of Working India report 2021 of Azim Premji University, nearly half of formal salaried workers moved into informal work between late 2019 and late 2020 and the poorest 20% of the households lost their entire incomes in April and May 2020. Considering the modest national minimum wage threshold of ₹375 per day (the Anoop Satpathy Committee), 23 crore individuals have been pushed below these minimal earnings. Poverty rates in rural areas have increased by 15 percentage points (pp) and by 20 pp in urban areas.More Related News