Covid-19 and its consequent waves have ravaged the humanity in long time to go.
It has exposed fallacies in all terms, be it our structured resilience, our well-bought immunities, humanity’s undisputed ability to control things on Earth or the very pride of most who thought Climate change was a myth and would never affect them.
India, became a fore ground in this fight against social, economic and ecological peril that destabilized the complete human world.
If we want, we can look this pandemic as a chance that made us realize our weaknesses, strengths and the need to consolidate our mechanisms even more, it highlighted where we could change and evolve, for better.
We saw the healthcare systems crumbling short of fostering the patients, the lack of oxygen that made matters even more miserable, we saw how the difference in production of oxygen region-wise needs to be plugged in.
We saw people travelling miles barefooted to sustain, we saw Aadhars falling short of ascertaining subsidies to people in need, we saw our best professionals feeling anxiety and helplessness in these times of crisis.
Yet the Indian budget fell short to address significant allocation for the crashed digital education, health, informal economy making up most of the country and marginalized communities.
A few important sectors and relaxations even suffered a further blow and the allocations were slashed down despite the need like MGNREGS etc., under the Pandemic’s curse.
Despite the poor suffered, government and the Central Bank attempted to save the economy, capping its own Capital Expenditure (CapEx) as well as of its Ministries.
It tried to bring the private sector back to life through well-calibrated incentives and subsidies and rolled-in PLI scheme (Production linked incentives) and several COVID-19 recovery packages.
India and its story of Deficits:
Indian economy has survived deep blows with efficient and apt efforts in the 1990s and continues to battle with extremities at times.
India, in a wonder combination, has the world’s fourth-largest ForEx (Foreign Exchange) reserves valued around $640.401 billion, but it also has a high public debt that is nearly 86% of the country’s GDP.
The country possesses a deficit in its earnings to its spending called Fiscal Deficit, that reached a staggering 9.5% of its GDP around the pandemic and lockdown.
India is a country that exist with trade as well as fiscal deficits. These twin deficits in check, restrict the country’s burgeoning influence, at times.
Thanks to the gift received from the World’s greatest financial organization International Monetary Fund (IMF), India can abridge its gap, that got widened in alleviating the distress of Covid and can help in addressing the adversities arising out of this chaos.
India has recently received an amount equivalent to INR 1.3 lakh crores or $ 18 billion from the IMF as Special Drawing Rights (SDR).
It is an international asset and not a currency, created by IMF to ascertain and supplement the official reserves of member nations as a way to provide greater liquidity.
A total of five currencies including the US dollar, Euro, the British Pound, Chinese Yuan and Japanese Yen, in a well-defined percentage makes up an SDR.
This allocation, approved by the Board of Governors of the IMF, came under a wider move meant to lessen the Nation’s perils.
It is worthy to note that this amount has not been meted out as a loan, that needs to be repaid.
The total global allocation of SDRs stands at US$650 billion (about SDR 456 billion) to help countries survive with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
India’s share stands at 2.6% of the overall allocation, in proportion with its voting rights.
SDRs allotted to India and happy endings?
It doesn’t just help to overcome from what has been lost, but rather offer to gain enough resilience for future, consolidate its own string of institutions and ‘build back better’.
SDRs, in this grant can be put for N number of purposes, be it paying for the imports for public consumption, negate outstanding debts or for domestic public security measures such as social protection, health, pension, education etc.
This money can provide a happy ending for many stories in the country, from merely sitting idle in the RBI’s ForEx reserves tranche.
We can either continue to wait for these SDR equivalent to flow in our budget but while we are looking at an upcoming wave, we already know what catastrophe it can bring with it, if let loose.
We can brace using whatever we have got and built, in this upswing to help us regulate our not-so-well downswing period, if there may be any.
There is so much to do and it cannot wait, for another wave, election games or simply another time.
As only 3% of the recovery package has been set aside for health, besides the Ministry of Finance has already reduced the health allocation by 9.8% from the announced deal.
This is the meagre importance a country’s government can give to Health post a pandemic. It further feels insignificant that India stands at 179 out of 189 countries when it comes to allocation for health in government budget.
It is not just the health that needs to be shaken out of comatose, Education is in perils and a complete generation is paying for it, through lesser learnings, increasing malnutrition and degrading mental health.
3.2 million students suffered great trauma, resulting from one of the longest school lockdowns ever known in the history of India, thereby losing greater skills needed to make a considerable future in life.
SDRs will find no greater use to be significant to Indian lives. We can be thankful of our lives, restore the balance in country’s development and strive with stretched wings of glory.