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Covid-19 Torpedoes Premature Jubilation Over its Imminent Defeat
- Published on 18 April 2021
Let Truth Prevail About Vaccines – the Deemed Drivers of Economic Revival
(Image Courtesy taxindiaonline.com)
“We are in the end game of the Covid-19 pandemic in India, and to succeed at this stage, we need to follow 3 steps: Keep politics out of the Covid-19 vaccination drive, trust the science behind Covid-19 vaccines, and ensure our near and dear ones get vaccinated on time”.
The Union health minister Harsh Vardhan stated this on 7th March 2021 while addressing an annual event of Delhi doctors.
Exactly a month later, Dr. Vardhan found himself outwitted by Covid. It mutated with gay abundance at home and abroad by availing prolonged lockdown as a public-funded hospitality.
The variants of Novel Corona Virus have successfully challenged the efficacy of the vaccines especially in India. Hundreds of doctors, nurses & support hospital staff, leave aside other vaccinated persons, are down with covid disease across the country.
Even vaccinated doctors, who religiously wore masks, found themselves infected. Some suffered serious ailments with at least one - a 62-year well-known doctor, dying even after admission to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
Unfortunately, news about fully vaccinated healthcare workers catching infection is being under-played by the mainstream media for obvious reasons. About 1000 healthcare workers in Lucknow tested positive for Covid over two to three weeks, causing manpower crisis in hospitals.
In a hospital at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, a gardener was assigned the job of taking swabs as covid had infected many employees, leading to staff shortage.
All such cases of vaccinated persons need to be probed scientifically to know what is wrong with the first-generation vaccines.
Corona Virus is, no doubt, back in the driving seat of governance on many fronts excluding elections to state assemblies and local governance bodies. Covid is having a major say in both the Government’s decisions and its inactions.
World Needs A New Order To Avoid Covid-fired Debt Crisis
- Published on 22 February 2021
(Debt Wave. Edited Image Courtesy: A 2019 UNCTAD Report)
The Covid-19 virus is turning out to be more lethal than dozens of Hydrogen Bomb. Leave aside for a while human tragedy reflected in the death of a few million & health issues faced by countless survivors. Think of pandemic-linked economic destruction including steep rise in unemployment and poverty.
Worry now over the Covid-crafted foundation for the next global meltdown. This might occur in next 5-10 years, if there is no multi-facet global cooperation. The West should take the lead in debt restructuring & fair global trade in all spheres.
According to Global Risks Report 2021 released last month, “businesses might suffer future paralysis or collapse under debt obligations. Reports already predict defaults on a significant proportion of public and private loans in Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom. Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS) respondents echo these concerns: ‘asset bubble burst’ and ‘debt crises’ appear as critical threats in the medium term”.
The Virus coaxed regimes to embrace lockdowns, pushing the global economy into unprecedented contraction. Lockdowns thus wiped out the income gains of 10 years in several developing countries. The lockdowns also exacerbated other diseases such as tuberculosis and AID due disruption in non-covid healthcare services.
As put by the World Bank President, David Malpass, Covid has “knocked more economies into simultaneous recession than at any time since 1870. It has ended a two-decade streak of steady global progress in poverty reduction, pushing up to 150 million people into extreme poverty by 2021”.
Time to Rescue Fiscal Responsibility from Ritualism
- Published on 21 February 2021
India is Living Dangerously Beyond its Means
(Edited Image. Courtesy: RBI)
Fiscal Responsibility has proved to be a revolving door for the successive regimes at the Centre. It is a special door from where the economy is unable to either take off to sustainable, double-digit growth or slip into abyss.
Covid-19 pandemic, and the resulting lockdowns, have thus brought fiscal discipline back to square one. The yet-to-stabilize situation has pushed India to the danger zone with estimated fiscal deficit (FD) touching record 9.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020-21.
The previous peak FD of 8.16% occurred in 2008-09 post global financial meltdown-led fiscal stimulus. This is actual FD computed by CAG and different from what was reported in the budget documents.
The general government debt (Centre & States’ explicit borrowings) has touched 90% of GDP, well above globally acceptable prudent level of 60%. The actual debt might be higher by a few percentage points as India does not have accurate, timely data on all government borrowings raised by different tiers of Government.
The Union Budget for 2021-22, coupled with the report of the 15th Finance Commission (15thFC), offers Modi Government a rare opportunity to start afresh in a challenging milieu. The two documents also serve as trigger for the States to review their fiscal framework. 15thFC has lined up slew of fiscal initiatives for the States.
White Paper on MSP: Enact Agricultural Prices Stabilization Act
- Published on 17 January 2021
Statutory Minimum support price (MSP) is not a weird demand of farmers. It is actually a multi-dimensional fuzzy ball debated superficially by half-knowledge anchors and their guests on cockfight shows.
No one has disclosed how many committees recommended what and when on statutory MSP over more than 100 years. A timeline of vital recommendations made by major panels has been prepared later in this column to give a touch of White Paper (WP) for giving a new deal to agriculture.
If farmers-caring Government had cared for facts, it would have first published a WP on why it showed urgency to issue three farm ordinances. It should have rationalized NDA’s & UPA’s indifference towards the need for long-pending legislations, apart from MSP law.
Of the many pending legislations on agriculture, 5 deserve special mention: a new seed law, new pesticides law, a comprehensive fertiliser law, biotechnology regulatory authority law and agricultural biosecurity legislation.
Farmers are baffled at the majestic failure of all regimes from British Raj to Modi Government to compute bare minimum economical prices below which sale of vegetables and fruits becomes losing proposition.
Hence peasants’ justifiable suspicion about Union Government’s offer to set up a committee to study their demand for MSP law. This is because the term MSP has been left out of two new farm laws including one relating to contract farming. The existing rules pertaining to contract farming under Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) Act in few States stipulated MSP-linked private transactions. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was once himself a champion of MSP in transactions between farmers and private entities. This is reflected in the 2011 Report of Chief Minister's Working Group (WG) on Consumer Affairs constituted by UPA regime chaired by Mr. Modi as Gujarat CM.
WG recommended: “Enforce MSP since intermediaries play a vital role in the functioning of the market and at times, they have advance contract with farmers. In respect of all essential commodities, we should protect farmer's interest by mandating through statutory provisions that no farmer-trader transaction should be below MSP, wherever prescribed”.
There are other reasons too for farmers’ distrust over Government’s offer to assure in writing that MSP would not be phased out. First, the Government ruled out enacting such a law in reply to a parliament question raised during July 2019. It was perhaps raised after Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) recommended such a legislation in March 2018.