[superbad]

Originally Posted by JayPrashanth

Everyone pays taxes. Even the poorest of the poor. Income tax is not the only tax around. Corona Virus came in through planes. Who controls civil aviation? The government. So, the government MUST be blamed for letting the virus come in without taking adequate measures. Don't blame population for an absolutely callous, idiotic and insensitive government. If we don't fix accountability, things will never change.

Cheers,

Jay

Agreed, everyone pays taxes but let's face it, income tax constitutes a minimum 10-15% of your income on an average, higher if you fall in the upper tax bracket. That too, without any freebies from the government. I'm not absolving the government. But accountability is with some people also.

[Stribog]

Originally Posted by Shreyans_Jain

The amount of damage done to the informal sections of the economy is incalculable. This sector almost exclusively driven by small businesses, a lot of whome don’t have access to formal credit facilities. They are one of the biggest employers and a major cog of the overall economy. A thriving informal economy keeps the overall consumption picture rosy even in face of headwinds. 4 years is a very optimistic assessment. The damage done in terms of jobs lost and hard earned money wiped out is worth at least a decade.

. Result? This time of the year right before the festive season is seeing empty markets, idle factories and jobless people. Such a dire situation before Diwali has never happened in the living memory of an entire generation.

The administrations can do all the creative accounting the want. Their salaries are secure. It is the common man on the street who has to bear the brunt of their stupidities and incompetence.

Let's not romanticise the informal economy for decades our severely restrictive and idealistic labour laws has spawned this beast called the shadow economy. Some numbers to establish why it is like a weed choking the economy

1) roughly 600mn Indians are in the labour force, of which 480 mn are in the informal sector. Of the 120mn in the formal sector fully 70mn are contract labour aka informal.

The wage disparity between the two is stark. This is 2012 data though and just for perspective (if any thing the gap would be higher). Formal sector daily wages was 520 vs informal at 150. A factor of 4.5.


2) given the horribly restrictive labour laws coupled with this army of cheap labour, labour in India is treated in the most inhumane manner.

3) disguised unemployment is another chronic issue. Directly and indirectly the agri sector employs 60% of the pop and contributes 16% to the GDP. You remove the large land owners, the politicians, the Amitabh Bachchan style farmers and this drops further to around 12%. 60% contributing 12% is horribly inefficient.

4) labour efficiency - India's labour productivity growth averaged 1.6% from 1947-1980. It is at 4.5%. China by comparison is at 7% and been that way for decades, while maintaining a peak of 12-14% for a decade in between. Why is this important? Studies have proved that when labour productivity goes above 7%, GDP growth at 8%. Except a few years from 2004-10 when this climbed (and our GDP growth rates with it) it has been stagnating.

No major economy has ever transitioned into a world power with an economy and agrarian force stuck in the middle ages.

Even china from 1985-95 had severe growth pangs and crises because it did what India has failed to do to this very day. Kill the informal economy. There Deng did it almost overnight, he then followed it up with dismantling SEO's (state owned enterprises) and making it a total free market with no labour laws to speak of. Law of supply and demand (of labour) did all the talking.

Given our now reasonably efficient PDS and JAM enabled subsidy delivery, the govt has to go ahead with the steps it has been taken to do both. Very simly put, India can't truly grow with this damocles sword hanging around its neck.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

We should make no mistake - India is facing its worst, by a very long lead, economic crises since 1947. I have a very clear memory of 1979-80, 1989-91, and a modest but clear memory of 1974 and of course 2008 which most on this forum will recall too. None of those knock downs had such a significant impact on GDP and unemployment as the present one. Most of us would struggle to determine the right basket of solutions given that we don't have a precedent. One detrimental common characteristic that 1974, 1979 and 1989-91 had was a desperate shortage of forex reserves & inflation. Those two at least we are safe from today. It is likely that 2021-22 could see a notional growth in GDP of say 7% but that would only be so as the denominator would be a seriously shrunken one. But it will be touted as an great achievement by the spin doctors just like we saw in 1980-81. Napoleon once said that an army marches on its stomach. Well voters vote on their stomach too.

Note for the OP - I'm not sure this job creation was wiped out only in the last 4 months. We were sitting on a 45-year high of unemployment several months before the lockdown. The cancer had spread much earlier. The lockdown accelerated the decline.

Big difference here sir and increasing production and labour hiring is proof of that. Structural failures (like under Indira and worse under Rajiv) backed by insane inflation (it has even hit 20-22%) caused a severe subsistence crisis. Right now our systems can deliver basic necessities to the Majority. With the global economies opening up slowly (something expected to last 2 years) we can expect the Indian economy to match.

The policy initiatives in areas like electronics manufacturing, pharma (API) manufacturing, the infrastructure pipeline will start driving up jobs and the economy again.

During the 70's and 80's though this was never a feasible option as even with growing global economies, our policies caused a severe logjam.

[pseudo_coder]

Originally Posted by JayPrashanth

Everyone pays taxes. Even the poorest of the poor. Income tax is not the only tax around. Corona Virus came in through planes. Who controls civil aviation? The government. So, the government MUST be blamed for letting the virus come in without taking adequate measures. Don't blame population for an absolutely callous, idiotic and insensitive government. If we don't fix accountability, things will never change.

Cheers,

Jay

Did any major nation in the world prevent the virus from entering their border? If 200 nations couldn't, we can't say that all those govts are callous, idiotic and insensitive. We don't live in an ideal world, and no govt knew what lied ahead. WHO itself was clueless at best, and deliberately misled at worst.

This is not to defend our govt. I was surprised when the govt was evacuating Indians from China. When virus entered India, we locked people down to prevent movement. But before that, we flew special planes to bring people from China. Thos is total contrast. A pandemic is not a war. People in affected areas must be prevented from escaping, even at greater risk to their life.

[su1978]

I agree with the issues faced by labor in the informal sector. But i have my studies here.
First of all, the situation is going from bad to worse due to the environment that has been created by the so called entrepreneurs. I have many such people living in my society who earned millions every month all these years. They could not sustain the salary which was hardly 20% of their profits for these workers. Instead, they chose to drive them away. These labors have migrated to their hometown understanding the different atrocities leveled by their employers on them during the shutdown period. The same employers are now sending buses to Eastern states to fetch these labors. I have witnessed the same as i belong to bihar and over these years we have seen these labors migrating. Even today, there are hundreds of buses that are coming from bihar/bengal/jharkhand/Uttar pradesh to bring labors back to north Indian states especially punjab etc where the next round of crops are almost getting ready. Over years, i have seen these so called maggots(entrepreneurs) amass huge wealth in forms of expensive cars, houses, huge parties etc. So why worry for them. They themselves are responsible if their offices/factories are getting closed down. Now these labors who have returned back are getting work in their own states under MNREGA, in brick klins and when the harvesting season will come, they will get work in the fields. Currently, these labors who have returned, are busy building their own houses under the different welfare scheme run by the current government.

Secondly, coming to the working class, i would again say that not everything is so bad as is being portrayed by most of the members on the forum. As an active jobseeker, i am seeing many vacancies from good companies like reliance/canon/panasonic/suzuki/maruti to name a few, being posted on websites like naukri.com. The portal is very active in hiding these job openings and charging the candidates and then sending them these masked vacancies. The modus operandi is very simple. Companies post some vacancy. There is a backend team which is sitting in the office of naukri.com and they keep on screening each and every section. The moment they see a vacancy from some good company or a vacancy of some prestigious company, the backend team immediately masks them. The reason i am so sure is the fact that once you call naukri.com for their paid service, the sales guy will blabber everything and you could record the statement. So this has got more to do with "munafakhori" or profiteering. In case someone wants a proof, i have mail communication with screenshots that i had sent to naukri.com. Such leeches are trying to take undue advantage of the situation. Some of my friends who work with some very good companies are also responsible for giving the departmental clearance to exiting employees. These companies have a reputation of being some of the best employers of the world. He confirmed to me that there are many vacancies in the market. If a person is leaving that company, it means that he would have got a much better opportunity.

Thirdly, most of the schools are charging complete fees from the parents. But when it comes to paying the teachers, they do a deduction in all possible ways. Got to know this from one of my neighbor is a teacher in DPS. Don't we think that this is something that needs to be stopped and schools like these should be banned and prohibited from committing any such act. Am sure that these schools would not be paying to blue collared employees as well.

Fourthly, Automotive sector is almost back to normal. This sector is a reflection of the state of economy of a country. Companies like hero/Bajaj etc have almost beaten the expectations. Most of automotive manufacturers have beaten their YOY figures. Look at Maruti, Hyundai, TATA & Mahindra. Its 21.31% for Maruti, 19.90% for hyundai and 4.25% for Mahindra. Tata has grown at whooping 168.69%.

Perhaps, its time we try to analyze the other angle as well rather than blaming the government most of the time. Its the attitude of the employers that needs to change. Only yesterday, i went for a ride to Kasauli. I could see that the dhabas at Murthal were doing business as usual. The most significant one being Sukhdev dhaba (where 35 waiters were tested covid-19 positive last week) was again lined up with cars. Kasauli was bustling with tourists and hotels were running full. Instead of what is being shown by some political parties to us, we should apply our own brains. Its election time in some of the states. Hope we remember the award waapsi gang and other scandals which come up everytime there is an election.

[locusjag]

Originally Posted by JayPrashanth

Corona Virus came in through planes. Who controls civil aviation? The government. So, the government MUST be blamed for letting the virus come in without taking adequate measures.

Actually, India was among the first nations to start screening passengers inbound from China, when the total COVID19 infected in Wuhan was still in 3 digits. This was in mid January.

What was not foreseen was the fast global spread of the virus. Incoming passengers from Italy for instance weren't screened at all initially; meanwhile Italy has had heavy trade and people links with textile industries from Wuhan. The Italians even had a "hug a Chinese" day to show their "solidarity" during the Wuhan outbreak. Who knows how many infected people came over from Italy to India in February and March?

[maddy42]

Originally Posted by su1978

I agree with the issues faced by labor in the informal sector. But i have my studies here.
First of all, the situation is going from bad to worse due to the environment that has been created by the so called entrepreneurs. The same employers are now sending buses to Eastern states to fetch these labors. Now these labors who have returned back are getting work in their own states under MNREGA, in brick klins and when the harvesting season will come, they will get work in the fields. Currently, these labors who have returned, are busy building their own houses under the different welfare scheme run by the current government.

Secondly, coming to the working class, i would again say that not everything is so bad as is being portrayed by most of the members on the forum. As an active jobseeker, i am seeing many vacancies from good companies like reliance/canon/panasonic/suzuki/maruti to name a few, being posted on websites like naukri.com.

Thirdly, most of the schools are charging complete fees from the parents. But when it comes to paying the teachers, they do a deduction in all possible ways.

Fourthly, Automotive sector is almost back to normal. This sector is a reflection of the state of economy of a country. Companies like hero/Bajaj etc have almost beaten the expectations. Most of automotive manufacturers have beaten their YOY figures. Look at Maruti, Hyundai, TATA & Mahindra. Its 21.31% for Maruti, 19.90% for hyundai and 4.25% for Mahindra. Tata has grown at whooping 168.69%.

Perhaps, its time we try to analyze the other angle as well rather than blaming the government most of the time. Its election time in some of the states. Hope we remember the award waapsi gang and other scandals which come up everytime there is an election.

+! to the points above. There are enterprenuers who have taken an advantage of this virus to get rid of a lot of employees and save costs and get the rest of the herd to bend to their whims and fancies. This include a lot of listed companies where the employees are stuck with a burden of debt on their head to continue listening and be a sheep in the game.

Schools in cities have charged full fees including transportation costs and the parents have no alternative. Know of a parent whose online id to access the online classes were blocked as the school increased the fees and he refused to pay without a meeting. There is no alternative than to cough up.

Rural india has received good rains and farming activity has progressed well. We hire about 10 families and gave them their salaries for work around our farm during the lockdown who travelled back to the Eastern state through the shramik trains free of cost to their homes. Today they are building their house with the govt aid and are not planning on coming back till the next couple of months pass by.

A lot of posters mention Scientific lockdown or unscientific lockdown. Could someone elaborate. As there was a economist on Mojo who claims about 60 million by june would get affected in india and we currently are no where close to those numbers.

Covid is real, please wear masks, practice social distancing and stop unwanted travel. Your safety and life is important.

Maddy

[poloman]

Team BHP is the new twitter. Either the forum is full of bleeding heart liberals or other side is quite silent. With a population of 150 Cr and extremely poor tax to GDP ratio we are expecting Govt magically to dole out money to each and every person, cut taxes and what not. When Govt also become become bankrupt like Greece, Venezuela etc they will move on to target the next thing

[Tucker48]

Originally Posted by sunishsamuel

Australia, Japan, New Zealand declared that they are undergoing recession. But we still have not. The Wire, Telegraph, The Hindu keeps publishing some articles on economic and fiscal health, GDP etc. But then they are not considered worthy in front of Republic, Aaj Tak, Times Now.

And when i look at the trending topics from Twitter India. Unemployment, hunger and slowdown are not trending in tweets compared to that of some topics that are not even worth discussing. And the other suggestion i got was that I should learn to support my country and not think negative all the time.

Recession is when 2 successive quarters of GDP growth are in negative which still has not happened in India.
Telegraph and The Hindu are mostly critical of the govt. just like Republic, Aaj Tak etc are not critical (mostly) of the govt.
The wire, I firmly believe is funded from abroad. Many of their articles are opinions against India without any facts just like Al Jazeera.
Anyways, the economy is in bad shape and with no vaccine in near future ( I wonder if any vaccine will actually be there), any actual growth over pre covid years will only happen from 2022-23.
Even the USA which has given trillions in stimulus is in recession. If the govts can't do anything about unemployment, hunger etc, what can the people do? Raise hell on streets?
The only major country which is doing better (supposedly) is China, where no one is even allowed to express themselves freely.

[ashish.uno]

Originally Posted by v1p3r

We are in deep, deep, deep trouble. Of course some of us have been saying so for a while based on what we see, more likely if you run a business or lead an organisation.

Unfortunately, most of us live in our little white collar WFH bubble, so the impact will come later and be softer. I very seriously wonder if there will be a revolution and the misery will be forcefully redistributed.

I would really love for all the supporters of the mismanaged lockdown, on this very forum, who said "government knows best" and that it's "your duty as a patriotic Indian to obey" to now lead the way out of the current crisis so that our fellow Indians don't starve.

There is no proven medication for this ailment. Our govt is as clueless as any other govt any where else or any of us on this forum.

But somehow it has become fashionable to diss our own just to sound progressive. One can argue that the methods are ineffective, but to chart everything out as mismanaged without suggesting a better alternative is just nit picking.

If anyone has better ideas I'm all ears.
Go corona go wont be successful unless we find a working vaccine and then mass administer. Till then we have to build health care capacity and slow down the inevitable as much as we can.
Wait a minute, didnt we do exactly that, during early lockdown, and through funds collected through PMCare?

As for employment, please do note we have suffered from systematic faultlines for decades. Only informal economy was keeping us afloat and this deliberate hit job of a chinese virus has now taken care of that too.

We have only now started to focus on manufacturing in a big way, but impact of such initiatives will only be visible in next few years, till then we have not much option but to wait it out.

IT sector has been hit hard, industries dependent upon contract labour have been hit hard. There are hardships, some in my extended family are going through hard times too. But what can one do on at an individual level but to wait it out.

That is where our indian family system has kicked in. Everybody has chipped in, and although there has been some discomfort, mostly everything is being taken care of.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by ashish.uno

Till then we have to build health care capacity and slow down the inevitable as much as we can.
Wait a minute, didnt we do exactly that, during early lockdown, and through funds collected through PMCare?

Could you point us to some link or data that shows how the money from that fund was spent? That would certainly provide some assurances and answers.

This page has very high-level information: https://www.pmcares.gov.in/en/web/page/faq More details would be welcome.

[fordday]

Originally Posted by Tucker48

Recession is when 2 successive quarters of GDP growth are in negative which still has not happened in India.

Even the USA which has given trillions in stimulus is in recession.

Is it true for USA?

Originally Posted by ashish.uno

Everybody has chipped in, and although there has been some discomfort, mostly everything is being taken care of.

I liked the sweeping finality of that part of your statement.

If that is so, this whole discussion seems pointless.

[poloman]

Originally Posted by am1m

Could you point us to some link or data that shows how the money from that fund was spent? That would certainly provide some assurances and answers.

This page has very high-level information: https://www.pmcares.gov.in/en/web/page/faq More details would be welcome.

While I agree with you that the expenditure part of the fund should be published, there is a purpose behind the huge hue and cry behind pm care funds.
The NGO's are now devoid of CSR funds which is their bread and butter.
https://scroll.in/article/966746/in-...ofits-in-india

Since it is a public charitable trust with voluntary donations and does not receive any government support, no CAG audit is required. Ruled SC.

Now some may say I don't even trust the PM of the country. That is your prerogative . You are free not to contribute to PM cares and contribute to a NGO whom you trust more than PM of the country. But some trust the PM more than NGOs, let them contribute right?

The funds will be audited by an independent auditor anyway on a yearly basis. Now you may say I won't trust the audit process. So ultimately whom are you going to trust.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by poloman

While I agree with you that the expenditure part of the fund should be published,

That's the information a lot of citizens are looking for. But thanks for the additional explanation. (All of which is quite easily found, displayed on several news websites, somewhat easier to find than detailed numbers. ) And since the post I originally quoted mentioned that the fund had been used to 'build healthcare capacity' during the lockdown, was just curious if the details were available to the general public. (Not saying I doubt that it was used in that manner, just looking for more details, since I couldn't find any and that's quite possibly because I haven't looked hard enough or properly.)

Most NGOs (at least the reputable ones) publish detailed annual financial reports or at least a more detailed list of the beneficiaries of the money that they collect.

[JayPrashanth]

Originally Posted by locusjag

Actually, India was among the first nations to start screening passengers inbound from China, when the total COVID19 infected in Wuhan was still in 3 digits. This was in mid January.

What was not foreseen was the fast global spread of the virus. Incoming passengers from Italy for instance weren't screened at all initially; meanwhile Italy has had heavy trade and people links with textile industries from Wuhan. The Italians even had a "hug a Chinese" day to show their "solidarity" during the Wuhan outbreak. Who knows how many infected people came over from Italy to India in February and March?

Yes. :-D And the screening was a joke. Everyone knows that. Holding a temperature meter to peoples' temples and expecting to stop the virus coming in was what was generally happening. And some self declaration form. All this has been documented on Youtube/Blogs and even a couple of newspaper reports if my memory serves me right.

What we needed was a compulsory 14 day quarantine for everyone coming in. While hindsight is always 20/20, nationalizing hotels for a few months with govts paying the hotels money to compensate for their losses could have helped arrest the spread. And this is what 'people with foresight', our so called leaders, should have done. There were multiple people suggesting this approach in early March. Obviously, nobody paid heed. Anyway, we get the govt we deserve. The results are for all to see. :-(

Cheers,

Jay

[Arjun Bharadwaj]

Its a shocking reality, but it is what it is - the economy is rotting. We understand it and accept it.

The above posts have explained the situation on hand much better than I ever can - but in my humble opinion, I am keen to learn what "I" can do as a common man to reduce the impact of the blow and if possible even start to reverse the rot.

Immediate thoughts that come to mind obviously revolve around helping the less fortunate around us, as long as we are capable of doing so. But what do we do next? - build micro societies which are capable of basic self sustenance? no idea.

I unfortunately have only questions and no answers and am eager to see that silver lining around the cloud which is an answer to the above.