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COVID-19 pandemic accelerated class inequalities and poverty in India. Comment.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a great leveler. Unlike tuberculosis, which is largely regarded as a poor man’s disease, COVID-19 has affected everyone, irrespective of their social or economic status. It has, however, also exacerbated several inequalities.
COVID-19 accelerated class inequalities 

• Inter- and intra-state disparities: In India, there are significant inter- and intra-state disparities. Rural–urban differentials are also severe. For instance, there is a huge skew in the distribution of doctors working in urban and rural areas, with the urban to rural doctor density ratio being 3.8:1. 
• In terms of availability of hospital beds, states like Bihar are well below the national average of 0.55 beds in the public sector per 1000 population while others like West Bengal (2.25 beds/1000) and Sikkim (2.34 beds/1000) have considerably more. 
• The union government has been providing supplementary resources as well as offering free testing and treatment for COVID-19 to 50 crore beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana through empaneled laboratories and hospitals in the private sector, in addition to government facilities. However, at a time when the entire country is amidst an outbreak of a highly contagious illness, underlying health system inequalities are undoubtedly intensified. 
• Gender inequality: With work-from-home guidelines issued by private companies and a strictly enforced social distancing policy, families are at home with kids, without any help from nannies or cooks. 
• Women, with full-time paid employment, will now also end up executing most of the household chores like cooking, cleaning, and childcare. This would result in many women working with reduced efficiency because of the additional and disproportionate share of the workload. 
• Further, there are concerns of rising domestic violence and sexual abuse. It is well-known that many crimes against women are carried out by people close to them, often in their own homes. Due to social distancing, it has become even more difficult for women to report their experiences and seek help. 
• Migrants: Differential safe passage arrangements for international and domestic migrants and differential quarantine facilities for different socio-economic strata have their roots in a society stratified by caste, class, gender and ethnicity Access to education: The access to education, for instance, is becoming more challenging for children from poorer households. For a majority of Indians, digital learning is still not a viable option. Even though the mobile phone and internet penetration has been quite rapid and high over the last few years, the digital divide is still quite significant. 
• The children from poor households that will lose out on vital access to education as long as the pandemic continues will hardly see an improvement in their conditions after that. These children will witness their households slide further into poverty over the coming year. 

COVID-19 accelerated class inequalities and poverty 

• The World Bank has noted that India is at risk of losing many of its hard-won gains against poverty. In its 2020 India Development Update in July, the World Bank noted that half of India’s population is vulnerable with “consumption levels precariously close” to the poverty line. 
• India’s most vulnerable are moving from poverty to hunger. In 2019, 14.5 percent of India’s population — 195 million people – were malnourished, largely due to extreme inequality. An OXFAM India survey found that half of the rural households were having to cut back on their meals five weeks after the Indian government instituted a 21-day lockdown. 
• Following the COVID-19-induced economic disruptions, millions jobs have been lost and million people pushed back into poverty in India, all of which have a hit on consumer income, spending and savings, says a report. 
• Poverty alleviation received a set-back, significantly changing the fortunes of many, putting people into poverty and some into abject poverty. 

Suggestion 

• Strengthen the “safety net” significantly for the most vulnerable: The government could consider expanding the scale and duration of direct benefits for the poor by transferring an additional INR 15,000 to INR 18,000 per head to 300 million Indians under the Prime Minister’s Garib Kalyan Yojana (welfare-for-the-poor plan) and providing other forms of support such as universalizing social security, increasing the monthly pension payout for senior citizens to INR 1,000 per month, and universalizing healthcare. 
• Enable survival of small and medium businesses: Provide direct assistance covering 70% of the payroll of small businesses, with a Small Business Corpus of USD 60 billion. 
• Restart the rural economy: Increase the maximum support price of critical crops, particularly priority cereals and pulses, and boost the funding and scope of the employment guarantee to all rural districts. 
• Provide targeted assistance to at-risk sectors: The government should devise sector-specific “rescue and revival packages” structured as five- to eight-year convertible loans for several capital and labor-intensive sectors such as manufacturing, retail, hospitality, healthcare, travel and automotives. 
• With a focus on export-oriented industries such as pharmaceuticals, electronics, renewables, medical devices, food processing, electricals, precision components, heavy engineering, chemicals and textiles, a renewed push should be made to attract investments and improve the ease of doing business. 
• Accelerate Digital India and innovation: We propose that the government catalyze a “Digital Team India” initiative along with leading global technology leaders and select local players to implement digital collaboration and cyber security solutions for Indian companies. 
• The government could accelerate deployment of high-speed fiber-based broadband and accelerate India’s transition to 5G. 

Conclusion 
The country needs to work towards reducing the vast inequality in education access, health facilities, livelihood opportunities, etc. to prevent accentuating its societal inequality in the future.

Topics Covered - Indian Health Issues, Covid-19 pandemic