The global pandemic situation of COVID-19 continues across the world, the major perception is it as a social equalizer it didn’t discriminate between rich and poor. In India, certain commentators have gone to the extent of likening prosperous high-rise cooperatives to urban slums, drawing a direct equivalence between the two, in case of the risk of local community spread.
In terms of economic policies to stop the widespread of the pandemic, almost all economies have provided strict social distancing measures, through the period of lockdown, partial or total. In the initial months of the pandemic, the Indian government enforced a total lockdown to the whole country. It was a struggling period to all especially migrant workers across the country. The main objective was unambiguous because lives matter more than economic prosperity.
The financial analyst said that 2020 recession is coming out and it was very different from the past recessions. India’s GDP shrinks in FY21 but the hope is that the recession is likely to be the shortest wave of the pandemic era. It would be said that the pandemic is a gentle reminder of how the economic world can change in unforeseeable ways. It treats rich and poor equally.
When considering COVID-19 as a great equalizer is real, the impact of the lockdown varies across different sectors, skills and economic strata. The Indian economy recorded 8.87 per cent of the unemployment rate. The continuing outbreak, an alarming to all jobless are being pushed the poverty line. As a result of this the poor class in India as well as other countries, face a very difficult situation. A lockdown might be riding a steady income flow while the disease among the middle class and rich, but the poor who face death from poverty with an unchanged risk of catching the disease without effective mitigation measures.
For example, construction is one of the sectors which affected badly, constitutes a smaller proportion of Gross Value Added (GVA) of the Indian economy, than finance and other professional sectors combined. But the percentage of the total workforce employed is much increase, making it as labour-intensive. Now, the time of technological advancement and yet inequality remains the same throughout the world and liberty. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates that it can equalize the economic world.
