Use Covid-19 to Make a Fairer India

Context: Covid-19 has exposed the rising economic inequalities in the world.

Rising Inequalities:

• Effect of disruptive events: wars, epidemic, and attempts to redistribute wealth exacerbate inequalities.

• COVID impact: More than 60 million are being pushed into poverty worldwide an on the other side US billionaires like  Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos's wealth is rising in billions.

• Distinctive reactions:

• Thinning of the center (middle class) due to their movement towards political extremes
• Rise in horizontal movements bringing toghether multiple objectives to assert their needs through a few identified leaders.

India’s tryst with inequality :

• After independence : 

• State monopoly: C Rajagolachari denigrated governing elites as ‘wooly-headed socialists’.
• Rampant corruption: black money and special-interest vote banks rose behind the veil of ‘poor friendly’ state.

• Liberalization: 

• Hydra of nationalism based on license permit raj and punitive taxation was beheaded after the 1990s to let global salaries and corporate lifestyles become a norm. However, beyond the headlines, disparities continued to rise.

COVID as an opportunity:

• Invest in equality enhancers:  Through ample ‘COVID fiscal headroom’ and bridging ‘opportunity gaps’.

• Social infrastructure investment :

• Increasing investment in healthcare (2-4% of GDP)

• Improved education (replacing rote-based instructions with application focussed and employment creating education.)

• Digital availability to every student.

• Improved Support to the migrants: through widened and rationalised unemployment support, adopting more delivery digital systems and consolidating the plethora of schemes.

• Provide Relief to the overburdened judiciary: 

• Judiciary suffers from worthless pleas like renaming India to ‘Bharat’ and other high profile pleas. (Around 60% of jail inmates are undertrials)
• Through standardization of matters: like bail and automated processes limiting the appeals to be heard in person.
• Segregation of higher courts: into two streams i.e.  

1. ‘General’- dealing with regular matters and 
2. ‘Singular’-dealing with constitutional and socially important cases.

• Increase the number of judges.

• Transform Regulators: 

• Despite having plethora of regulators, we have only few defined service standards to measure their performance.
• They need to be pro-active: take suo-motu action in a free market economy to protect consumers, small entrepreneurs, and the vulnerable.

• Provide credit support to vulnerable: 

• As capital creates an entrepreneurial glass ceiling, MSME support by the governemnt will hopefully support small firms.

• A credible equity capital pool: created as a sub-allocation under the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF).

Conclusion: By helping the vulnerable to overcome inequalities, Gandhiji’s dream of Sarvodaya (universal uplift) through Antyodaya (uplift the most vulnerable) can be achieved.