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Financial Support to Minimum Wage Workers: 21 day Lockdown
The world's largest Coronovirus 21 day lockdown that has been announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 24th March, 2020 to prevent spreading of COVID-19 is deemed to be a fundamental necessity, taking into account the rate at which the virus is proliferating and India's population count. Economic giants of the world such as the United States of America and China have/had not taken such drastic measures when the official count of coronavirus affected people in their respective countries was in the 600s (as of 26th March, 2020). The Prime Minister has been applauded by people from various fields including economists who have predicted a fall in the GDP of the world by around 2% and a further 2% fall in India’s GDP bringing it down to 2.7 to 3%
P Chidambaram, former Finance Minister of India in an interview held on 26th March, 2020 addressed the necessity of the lockdown but at the same time stated that he was “disappointed that the Prime Minister did not add at least five points at the end of his 21 day lockdown announcement regarding issues that minimum wage workers, agriculturalists and self-employed citizens would face”
It is essential and commendable that economic recovery is not on the horizon but a three week lockdown commands for food and money in one’s pockets. Staying at home requires financial support, especially when taking into account self-employed minimum wage workers. The drastic step taken by the Government of India is multi-tiered and composes issues which vulnerable sections of the society would be faced with. Addressing these issues and formulating a brief five-pointer solution by public and government contribution would suffice and make citizens acclimatize the plan with more enthusiasm. P Chidambaram stated in his interview with India Today that the economic crises that India and the world would face in the forthcoming weeks is bigger than the 1947 migration crisis, tsunami of 2004 or the economic crisis of 2008 and 2013. He stated that this would be the biggest crisis India has faced post-independence but is also a necessary one when weighed against human lives. In furtherance of these issues, he briefly mentioned a ten-pointer plan which the government could improvise up on to offer financial support:
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