By Dr Vijay Kumar Bhatia
The Covid-19 virus has effected the entire world, including USA and the developing countries. The virus forces people to remain inside and follow social distancing as there is no medicine or vaccine for this disease.
The only protection is to stay home and the lockdown. Many countries are envisaging strategies to tackle with the Covid-19 pandemic. In such a scenario the decision of India to impose early lockdown since mid of March, and social distancing, can be really appreciated, and it is showing positive results.
Because of the timely measures taken the number of Corona cases are rising very slowly in India. With population of 1.350 million till 21th April there were only 17.600 Corona cases, with 2.854 recovered. Meanwhile the situation in other countries of world, such as USA, Spain, Italy, Germany, etc., is very grim and a lot of people are dying due to Corona disease.
The best thing about Indian government policy is that the lockdown in India is imposed by consensus and not by force, and people generally respect it. The government of India, during the lockdown, announced economic package to give food and economic help to poor including daily wagers and labors. About 800 million people will get free cereals and cooking gas along with cash transaction for three months.
The pandemic has many negative effects. Due to lockdown economic activity is almost stopped and there is no manufacturing. Daily workers are most affected, and those who do not have fixed income. The pandemic will effect the economy of entire world including India. The IMF have forecast 1.9 percent growth of India, which is a serious issue for economic development.
However there are some other dimensions of the pandemic. There is a consensus by examining the current situation that economic growth will definitely slow down in the current fiscal year and will adversely effect investment and job market and the poor people in the entire world. India is not immune to such developments.
However we must not ignore the positive side of pandemic. There are many possibilities that the countries of Europe and the United States will move their investments from China to India. In 2019 $ 135 billion was invested in China.
The conflicting relations and losing trust between US and China and European countries and China in the pandemic crisis period will definitely adversely effect investment in China. The business community of US and European countries and some other countries are searching alternatives to China.
In such a scenario India is the best available option with favourable business climate and huge consumer market. The huge size of skilled labour, including IY professionals and scientists, can further attract the European countries and US to invest in India. There are much possibilities that at least thirty to fifty percent of China FDI investment will shift to India in the coming months.This means around $40 to $ 65 billion of additional FDI that will flow to India instead of China.
In other words this mean rapid economic growth and development of India with huge job creation in the coming years. Before celebrating for economic growth there is a huge challenge of saving people of India from pandemic.
This will depend on government policies in the coming days. If India succeeds in protecting the life of its citizens from Corona pandemic nobody can restrict India to become a powerful nation in the coming years. The government in India also have challenge to protect the poor and business community from the negative impact of economic slowdown and to save jobs of working people.
The pandemic is also an opportunity for India to rethink about rural population and to create new model of development based on village-centered development.
In the coming years if India want to become super power it must develop villages as unit of economic zones by developing medium industries including agriculture based industries, small hospitals units including Medical Institutes, Renewable energy generation at villages and Information Technology etc.
Another very long repercussion of lockdown will be the growth in the E-Learning market. India is the second largest market of e learning next to US market in the world with 10 million users.
The Covid crisis and lockdown have further enhance E-Learning in India. Additionally the cooperation of Indian health care sector, by providing medicines to combat the Corona pandemic, along with working for the vaccine, will further strengthen India’s role in the world. Thus the pandemic represents a time for reassessing the potential of India and its constructive role in the international community.
Dr Vijay Kumar Bhatia – Assistant Professor, Ram Lal Anand College, University of Delhi , India.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).