KOCHI:
Students for Liberty- South Asia & Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR) hosted a live webinar on “Positive Steps Towards Revival of Economy in the COVID-19 Era” on the 29th of May (Friday) 2020. Li Zhao Schoolland , Director of External Relations—Asia Pacific for the Acton Institute and Nissy Solomon, Senior Research Associate at Centre for Public Policy Research spoke at the event.
Speaking from a global perspective, Li Zhao stressed on the importance of staying hopeful and positive towards the post COVID economic scenario.Think tanks & opinion leaders need to help people build the bridge between capital & business by identifying and facilitating investors including venture capitalists, ngo capitalists. She added that individual initiative is key to economic revival.
Speaking from an Indian perspective, Nissy Solomon highlighted that social security schemes announced by the Finance Minister inadvertently hit the seasonal and migrant labourers hard as they were not eligible to avail benefits due to conditions like residency proof etc. Thus COVID19 is not just a healthcare emergency but one of the biggest humanitarian crises in the country with millions of stranded migrants. The National Food Security Act follows the 2011 census data to cover 800 million people as beneficiaries but the recent projection is anywhere between 900 to 920 million people. The difference between two figures has shaped into a humanitarian crisis.
Talking about the Economic Package, Solomon highlighted that relief constituted only 11% of the economic package amounting to about 1.5% of the GDP. The rest were a combination of credit schemes, repackaging of existing schemes presented in the budget, and few structural reforms, some of which are likely to be far reaching.
She stressed on few preconditions for economic revival. The immediate goal is to ensure everyone’s survival through priority spending. In the medium term, construction and infrastructure, especially health infrastructure space will be at the core of economic revival inorder to meet dual objectives of generating rural employment and providing access to health care. She highlighted that collaborative efforts between the public and private healthcare system is important in strengthening the health sector of India and increasing last mile connectivity.
Reviving the MSME sector and ensuring the return of labourers is crucial in the revival phase. For the rural economy, a good beginning has been made in de-regulating agricultural marketing to give wider access to farmers for selling produce to different entities instead of APMCs only.
