India On Course In The Fight Against COVID-19

Six months after the global outbreak of the novel coronavirus, India not only delayed its spread but is also on course to contain its lethal effect. Daily growth rate of the positive cases has drastically slowed, and the recovery rate has gone past 63 per cent to affirm that India has taken good care of its large population.

The Prime Minister’s timely decision to impose lockdown gave the much needed elbow room for the government to ramp up facilities and infrastructure. In January, India just had one laboratory to test samples of Covid-19. Now there are more than 1200 laboratories, spread uniformly across the country. Ramping up the testing facilities firmly scaled up the screening. India has tested over 12 million samples till now. This indeed has had a benign impact on testing and tracing and treatment.

India’s Covid-19 positive cases have gone past the nine lakh mark; but, 63 per cent of patients have been cured and discharged from hospitals. At a time when two indigenous vaccine candidates have entered the human trial stage, India can rightly take comfort from the flattening of curves in two large affected cities of Mumbai and Delhi. Twenty states in India meet the norms of World Health Organization’s 140 tests per day per million. India is testing 8762.7 people per million. India had rightly gone for nationwide lockdown when positive cases were rising at 38 per cent rate, which has now slowed down to just 3.24 per cent.

Besides, the cases and fatalities per million in India are the lowest in the world. The fatality rate in India stands at 2.62 percent; it is a matter of huge relief. Furthermore, a good chunk of dedicated beds in hospitals remain unoccupied which should also give satisfaction. Indian pharma industry has also risen to the occasion by ramping up production of a bouquet of medicines found useful in the care of the Covid-19 patients. The availability of ventilators, procured through the PM CARES Fund, along with other critical equipment truly helped the medical professionals to effectively respond to the challenge.

Equally praiseworthy is the involvement of the civil society, NGOs and volunteers who came forth to conduct house to house surveys to streamline the testing and tracing strategy for containing the spread of the virus.

The pandemic, which has a parallel dating back to the last century, affected the economy and the livelihoods. The poor had to be protected on priority basis; the government rolled out the biggest free foodgrains programme in the world with 800 million beneficiaries at a cost of roughly Rs 1.5 lakh crores. The Lockdown had triggered migration of workers, and the government very timely responded with a Rs 50,000 crore employment scheme within a fixed time frame in six states, which accounted for most inflows of migrant workers.

To stimulate the economy, government unveiled the Rs. 20 lakh crore economic relief packages, touching upon each sector, while also initiating structural reforms to make India an attractive investment destination. The small and medium enterprises employ the largest chunk of India’s working population. This sector very deservedly gained the much needed attention of the government in the form of fiscal incentives, affordable credit and even institutional hand-holding ecosystem, with the cumulative package pegged at Rs 3 lakh crore.

In agriculture, the government took bold steps to free farmers from the bondage of the local agricultural marketing committees, giving them much needed freedom to sell their farm produce to anyone, besides incentivizing value addition. The Atmanirbhar package, as the stimulus package is called, is truly in the spirit of making India self-reliant by turning the corona crisis into an opportunity. The liquidity infusion, including Rs. 50,000 crore by reduction in Tax Deduction at Source (TDS) and Tax Collected at Source (TCS) only, symbolizes focused approach to re-engineer the Indian economy.

Script: Manish Anand, Senior Special Correspondent, the New Indian Express