Immediate Impacts of Lock Down in India: Few statistics ► The COVID-19 virus has infected 151 lakh people in India so far and killed over 1.8 lakh (until (April, 2021)14 ► India has one government hospital bed for every 2000 persons and only 2.3 critical care beds per 1,00,000 persons15. Studies predicted high deficits of hospital beds and ventilators for COVID 19 patients if cases increase continuously.16 ► The Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE) reported that the lockdown has resulted in a job loss for 122 million people in India, causing the unemployment rate to rise to 27.11 per cent in April 2020 as against 6.7 percent before lock down. The survey reported job loss of 91.3 million, including daily wage workers and those working with small traders, 18.2million employment loss of entrepreneurs, and 17.8 million among salaried class in April 2020.17 ► The International Labour Organisation (ILO) reported with the wake of COVID 19 in 2020 that the pandemic affected 2.7 billion workers globally due to lockdowns. According to this report, in India, with a share of almost 90 per cent of people working in the informal economy, about 400 million workers or 40 crore in the informal economy are at risk of falling deeper into poverty during the crisis.18 ► Social distancing measures and national lock down resulted in 135 million people across the world already facing food shortages.19 ► According to some report, over 300 people had lost their lives owing to starvation, exhaustion, suicide, accidents and other non-virus related reasons during lock down period in India.20 ► Even though the government announced a doubling of Public Distribution System (PDS), poor households in many states struggled to get their share. For example, in Jharkhand, an estimated 7 lakh households had pending ration card applications, rendering of them ineligible for PDS.21
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https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-IN&mid=%2Fm%2F02j71&gl=IN&ceid=IN%3Aen Shetty, Devi (2020): "How MCI can save the country: Tough Covid-19 battle can only be won by our young doctors and nurses. We need many more of them" , Times of India, 26th March. 16 Singh, Prachi et al. (2020): "COVID-19 | Is India's health infrastructure equipped to handle an epidemic?", Brookings, 24 March. 17 Nanda, Prasant K (2020): "India's unemployment rate climbs to 27.1%, 121.5mn out of work: CMIE", Livemint, 5th May. 18 “40 crore Indian workers may sink into poverty due to COVID-19: ILO”; https://auto.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/40-crore-indian-workers-may-sink-into-poverty-due-to-covid19-ilo/75051095 19 Dahir, Abdi (2020): "'Instead of COVID-19, the Hunger Will Kill Us.' A Global Food Crisis Looms", The New York Times, 13 May. 20 “Coronavirus lockdown | Activists say over 300 deaths related to lockdown troubles”; https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/activists-say-over-300-deaths-related-to-lockdowntroubles/article31491525.ece 21 Dreze, Jean (2020): "Excess stocks of the Food Corporation of India must be released to the poor", Indian Express, 9 April 15
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