Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked the nation’s poor for forgiveness. India lockdown has impacted to the economic and human being.
Modi said in his monthly address on Sunday, broadcast on state radio.
“I apologize for taking these harsh steps that have caused difficulties in your lives, especially the poor people.”
Modi added, “I know some of you will be angry with me. But we have to win this battle.”
Modi announced an unprecedented three-week lockdown – the world’s largest – which came into effect on March 25 to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Lockdown Has Impacted the India’s Poor
On the other hand, the decision has stung millions of India’s poor. The lockdown has impacted them in a hungry. Also, it forced the jobless migrant laborers to flee cities and walk hundreds of kilometers to their native village.
The poor “would definitely be thinking what kind of prime minister is this, who has put us into so much trouble,” he said, urging people to understand there was no other option.
“Steps taken so far … will give India victory over corona,” he added.
On Sunday, the confirmed coronavirus cases in India rose to 979 with 25 deaths.
According to Aljazeera, the government announced a $22.6bn economic stimulus plan on Thursday to provide direct cash transfers and food handouts to India’s poor. A quarter of India’s 1.3 billion people live below the poverty line.
Two of the three winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, said that the poor needs much more aid.
“Without that, the demand crisis will snowball into an economic avalanche, and people will have no choice but to defy orders,” they wrote in the Indian Express.
Hence, the lockdown is expected to exacerbate India’s economic woes at a time when growth had already slumped to its slowest pace in six years.