Breakdown in communication and trust between the government and citizens resulted in heavy hardship as citizens lost access to basic services. There are lessons to be learnt from Punjab, Kerala and Odisha. We need to build enabling infrastructure that helps communities to act freely to meet their own needs.
Posts tagged as “lockdown”
During COVID-19, larger centralised rice mills have been shut down due to transportation restrictions and lack of diesel. But smaller decentralised rice mills have been running and keeping farmers alive. There are many lessons for rural development from this experience.
Bank managers have no sense of how much money can be productively used by MSME borrowers in the current circumstances and are afraid to lend. If the MSME sector is to be revived, there would have to be transparency and coordination across all stakeholders.
The coronavirus lockdown has reinforced the merits of a basic income scheme. But apart from alleviating distress, the replacement of wasteful subsidies by a basic income scheme would even be financially prudent. It would make economic reform more viable and the public sector more efficient.
Police violence during the ongoing lockdown in India is dangerously undermining India's fight against the coronavirus. Liberia's experience with Ebola shows that community involvement is as important as the role of emergency services during a pandemic.
Across the world, countries have been forced to sacrifice economic activity to contain the spread of coronavirus. In India, lockdowns and restrictions will have an adverse impact across a range of issues, from NPAs in the banking sector, to trade in the chemical sector.