The three Musketeers – Health, education & Job

Pretext

In 2019, a report on unemployment was ‘leaked’ through the Indian government. It was prepared by the Periodic Labor Force Survey PLFS. It showed that unemployment in India is an all-time high in the preceding 45 years. A huge debate was stormed within the media and the newspaper articles. People were talking about it on social media. The government tried to deny the report as a false one. It also tried to doze off the damage by launching a policy of National Infrastructure Pipeline. It said that the central & the state governments along with the private sector engagement will be investing heavily in some selected infrastructure sectors to make India a 5 Trillion Dollar economy by the year 2024-25. It was some positivity before the COVID 19 arrived and ruined everything. For the past 6 months, due to intensive lockdown for the mitigation and prevention of the spread of the virus, the economy took a major downturn. A recent government report showed that in the last quarter, the economy is reduced by 24% as compared to the last year, same period. It should not have come as a major shock considering the magnitude of the lockdown and the dominance of unorganized sector dependence over the market.

Shaking grounds

COVID 19 has shown us a dark mirror of our health care infrastructure, the education sector, and the fragile job market. Millions of people are affected by the pandemic. Not only is there an economic loss but as well a huge mental level struggle is before us. India now stands at the helm of the pandemic and sharing the majority of the cases worldwide. No pride in that. We were not prepared for such a situation. In fact, the low mortality of the people saved us a face. We did well in implementing the lockdown measures. Due to the population density within the country and the unfortunate migrant workers migrations to their native places washed our efforts.

It is clear that there is an urgent requirement for working on core issues. We need to truly uplift our people and that too at a faster rate. That won’t be possible without keeping aside the selfish goals of those in the authority, capitalists & the people themselves. It has to be acted upon together as one country. We had a poorer economic situation during the 1990s when we were left with just a week of the foreign exchange reserves! It compelled us to take the historic step of liberalizing the economy. We opened ourselves to the private sector in a major way. Globalization was welcomed. The era of the licensing raj was kicked aside. In the coming decades, India observed huge economic growth so much so that we now stand in one of the top five countries GDP wise & one of the top holders of the FOREX. The flipside to it is that the per capita income of the people in the country is abysmally low. We are a lower-middle-class country.

Something which didn’t happen even at that time was the land reforms. We needed it then, we terribly need it now. Gini Coefficient for India shows that the gap between the top 10% & the bottom 50% is at an all-time high. The poor became poorer & the rich became richer. We are passing through the era of crony capitalism. It is obvious that in this pandemic, not all of the Indians are being affected in the same manner & magnitude. Yet we have not opened our eyes to the new reality.

Musketeers

-Data shows that an average Indian spends 89% of the health expenditure from his pocket. Almost 55 million Indians pushed back to the below poverty line every year due to this. We have a crying health infrastructure with a poor availability in the rural areas which constitute a big 70% of India. It is also that majority of our BPL population lives in rural areas. They spend a tough time fighting small and bigger chronic diseases. The norm is that until it is deadly, it won't be taken care of.

-During the past months, we tried to impart education to the children through the online medium. It is a great idea. Many of the schools kept on working that way even today. This would require that a student should possess a smartphone or a laptop with a high-speed data connection. It’s just that only less than 40% of Indians actually possess a smartphone device, leave aside the internet availability. The majority of the students could not be connected to the teachers in this pandemic. Our education system is not just lopsided but as well upside down. It’s unreachable to the backward areas. The gaps have kept on enlarging. 

-India’s 50% of the population is dependent on agriculture which contributes about 15% to the GDP of India. Most of the farmers who are engaged in the sector are marginal & no landholders. 86% of the farmers hold less than two hectares of land. This is a huge gap that is imprinted on our inefficiencies in land productivity. Comparing to China, it has almost triple productivity through the lands. Again, less than 40% of the farming land is irrigated. This mandates farmers to depend on the monsoon. This also causes them to remain unemployed during the Rabi season. This sector is also dealing with the problem of disguised unemployment, i.e. marginal productivity of the labor is nil. Most of them are compelled to engage in the same land where productivity is not increasing from their contribution. They simply have to venture out of their native places in search of jobs. Owing to no educational background, they largely work in the manual unskilled jobs.

Dilemma breaking

In India, every single hour a student & every fourth hour a farmer commits suicide & that is just according to official figures. The situation is severe. Stress is high. In mid of all this, the country’s socialist inclination is helping people to feed their empty stomachs. However, our approach needs to change. We need to empower people in a true sense. There is enough of spoon-feeding. We need to invest elephantly on the rural health infrastructure, equitable education opportunities, availability of the land resources, fill in the digital gap (which is already been well thought of by the government - BharatNet), and publicize the sectors (yes!).

Owing to our huge population & the lack of enough resources, we need to create jobs in equal fashion. We need to industrialize & expand the service sector in a speedier fashion. The government has been forcing the idea of entrepreneurship. But this is not yet happening efficiently. The results in the past decade are not encouraging. Since the consumption power of the people is not enough, it is predicted that the business would fail. Also that the banks are not providing the loans in the manner as the condition demands. This mandates the government to themselves establish industries, (maybe later to be privatized) and take the responsibility instead of trying to pass the light at the lonely crossroad. If we can take care of the basic need of the people, i.e. health & education, there is a good chance that we see brighter sunshine.

The time is ripe, hit the iron!