 Poverty has always been with us, neoliberalism has done nothing to resolve it. The last SECC was a grim reminder where 56% households had no land whatsoever and 90% households were without a single person who earned more than 10,000 rupees a month. Now into this rural hinterland we have a huge mass of returning migrants and together what is the future for them. And then there is the consequences of a pandemic amidst a totally broken health system. There are the social consequences of fear and scapegoating and discrimination. What will our Shedulka, Shedul tribe, Muslim brothers and sisters face? What will single women face? What will the aged face? What will children without care face? The worst of all persons with disabilities, what is going to happen to them in these times? The absence of any kind of social rights net except thankfully NRJ and to some extent the PDS. So how grieved do you think this crisis is? What is its nature? What has brought us to the point, to this point? JD, I thought the first round we would just talk about how truly serious is the nature of this crisis and what is its character. So may I request Prabhat firstly to come in and respond. Thank you very much Harsh. Thank you for having me on this panel. Yes, I have no direct experience of the crisis of partition and the human suffering that that gave rise to. But to my mind, in the entire period after independence, I have never seen anything like this. In terms of the depth of the humanitarian crisis we are witnessing today. But even worse that this particular crisis is sandwiched between a crisis which was already there and economic crisis of the world economy, within which there was a crisis of India as well, which was already there even before the pandemic struck. For instance, we know that unemployment before the pandemic, unemployment estimates put it at a level higher than ever in the last 45 years. And what is worse, when the pandemic is over, well, if at all it is over, but suppose in some sense we link back to a kind of normality, actually there would be some irreversible changes which would have been introduced into the economy and into our lives, which actually would mean the perpetuation or an accentuation of the crisis that had preceded it. Let me just give you an example that the people who have gone back to the villages are obviously not going to have a level of income, which is anywhere comparable to what they were having earlier. At least unless specific demands are made, specific movements are launched and so on, this is not going to happen. Now to the extent it does not happen and they are not willing to go back to the cities, you would find that actually their income should have gone down, demand would go down and as a result there would be an overall worsening of unemployment. So sometimes this feeling that we have that all right, some people have deaf towns to go into the villages, but the total amount of employment in the economy is the same or would be the same as it was before the pandemic, that assumption itself is not right because the very movement of people would also reduce the amount of employment that the economy would have even if the specific pandemic caused unemployment is something which is done away with. Now this is something which actually was affecting the lives of people in general pretty drastically even before the pandemic struck and the pandemic of course has worsened it greatly. For instance we know that per capita real consumption expenditure in rural India was 8% less per capita, 8% less in 2017-18 compared to what it had been in 2011-12, that's for all, that's just the average. Now if that's true of the average, you can imagine how much worse it would be for Dalits, for women, for the marginalized groups. Therefore we were in and 8% is a lot per capita, so we were really in the midst of a crisis even before that. So serious that the government actually suppressed the information relating to that particular NSS round, but in that then the pandemic comes in and this huge de-urbanization which would put even greater pressure on the rural economy. So we are in the midst of an absolute real serious humanitarian crisis. How we got there, which is the last question that you have, but I think essentially in the world economy as well as in the Indian economy, in fact in all the major economies of the world which reflects itself at the global level, there has been a very sharp increase in income inequality during the period of globalization. I would put this increase in income inequality somewhat differently. I would say that there has been a rise in the share of the economic surplus in the total output. By economic surplus, I mean all the property incomes you get and all the incomes of people who live off the property incomes, while the non-surplus is basically the wages and the incomes of the working people. Now any such redistribution implies a reduction in demand. This is something because per unit income the working people consume a lot more than the surplus earners. So every such redistribution implies a shift of a reduction in demand. At the world there was a reduction in demand which was reflecting itself as well as the Indian economy is concerned. Within India there has been such an increase in the share of the surplus and therefore we were witnessing this very serious structural constraint on growth and structural crisis which was engulfing us. And on top of that the pandemic has struck and has given rise to this very serious humanitarian problem. Thank you Prabhakar. That's really sobering for you to say that after partition this is probably the biggest humanitarian crisis. And that it's a crisis that already existed on which the pandemic and on which the lockdown have piled up on. Gopal Guruji, are you there? Gopal, so if you could please see how you look at this moment in our history. Thank you Harsh for inviting me to converse with other experts on the very important issue. Broken economy and the future of social rights of the marginalized sections in this country. To respond to your first question that is it really very vast in the history of crisis? Yes definitely it is as Prabhakar has already rightly mentioned as the crisis which are humanitarian in nature. That is to say that it is actually affecting not only the economic, the political, the social but most importantly emotional stability of human being. Earlier before the pandemic people actually as Prabhakar has already pointed out it is all accumulated. It is the manifestation of accumulated crisis in terms of unemployment, wages, economy. Now the manifestation has led to a kind of emotional depression of people and that is why you find people do not want to stay back in the cities and they are on the road and their journey has been so tragic. So it actually is affecting all the important aspects, core aspects of human existence in life. Of course there were crises, there were what kind of crisis, 1972, 71, 72 drought situation actually really hit people very badly. Lower state of the society and the food crisis, unemployment and all that was there. But this is I think this different and it is actually affecting not only economy but the entire structure which actually will give you some guidance to survive meaningfully in the society. Now the most important point that I would like to share with you is the kind of inequality we had before pandemic was there. But as and when pandemic grew into its worst degree that the economy, the material suffering actually was replaced by the emotional insecurity of the people. And therefore I think people, those who are in the street working classes were actually not caring for the material guarantee that the states where the states are offering to the people to stay back and the opportunities will be opened up. They don't care they are going back and that is I think most important dimension of the pandemic crisis. So emotional going back to the villages staying very close to the intimate is the concern now. That only means that the civil society and the government in the cities has not cared much about these people and they have actually been abandoned. So I think emotional depression has been very, very deep in the present case. That's one worst manifestation of the crisis. Now when they go back to the villages providers already said there will be some kind of pressure on the local opportunity structures. It will be very difficult for the local government. The local might become hokal but the hokality is vacuous I guess. Because you know there is no infrastructure, there is no possibility of opportunities coming up at the local in the immediate future. So I think there will be some kind of disruption between the demand and supply at the local level as well. And therefore unemployment will always be there and it cannot be taken care of immediately. And waste structure will always be a problem and wages are going to be down and they will not go up. So that is one worrying part that the government or those who are actually thinking about restoring broken economy they will have to think about it. So that is one challenge that is going to be there. And what else the other problem has you said? What brought us to this point? So especially the psychosocial that you talked about the collapse of faith. Why do you think we reached this point? I think what has already been mentioned that it is the insensitivity of the government to really respond to the crisis of unemployment. And respond to it immediately after it was actually it was signaling. It was giving warning signals to all of us. At least they're getting into the action to really take care of all these workers could have been avoided actually but that didn't happen. Now certain imposition of lockdown has really parallelized the whole movement of people going. So that I think is one immediate consequences. But overall the many manifestation of the crisis the pandemic has is not sudden it has it is accumulated. The crisis are accumulated. And therefore I think we can actually go into defining what were the crisis. How are they maturing into a big crisis that we all know. But let me actually tell one thing about the. What is the status of social rights in this pandemic? That's the lead question that we have to raise. And can you really meaningfully talk about social rights? Can you really meaningfully reading them in terms of actually providing access to opportunity structures? And how and in the social actually what is important is to give them give them workers and the marginalization of society. Employment that will restore their dignity back. But that doesn't happen as you very rightly mentioned that people have to queue up for a small portion of mill. Two kilometers, three kilometers and yet they find there's no food available. So it's the kind of frustration and depression. It is much more morally so-called and corrosive that we are seeing. So I think it is the accumulated crisis that are manifested in a very disproportionate manner. So that's what I would like to say. Thank you so much Gopal. I think it's really important that you underline the psychosocial character of the crisis. You know the complete breakdown of faith of our working poor on their government and also on middle-class society. And the absence of any kind of hope, the stripping of dignity. I think all of these are really crucial aspects. And the second point that you made was that this is cumulative. This is not something that has happened suddenly. It is really the outcome of a much longer breakdown of precisely these elements of social cohesion which is trust and solidarity. Aruna, I can't see you. Are you around? Yes, I'm here. So Aruna, if you could come in now. You're the closest in this panel to the realities in rural India. You're in Thelonia and how does the crisis look to you from where you are? Harsh, you placed me at a very critical point. I was one of the older members of this panel and I was a year old when partition took place. And I don't know if Rabat and I are the same age or we are one year apart from each other. But I happened to be in Delhi. Now, and I don't think even then, I mean though memories are very, very vague and very hazy. But even in my younger age, when I was in my first year in primary school, the atmosphere around was one of hope. I mean there wasn't this kind of complete lack of hope that you see today. And I do think it's been one of the worst crisis because let me just go down a few things. And I agree with so many things that Gopal and Rabat have said before me. But it is the callousness. Actually people always hoped that society and the state would not be as callous. It's this callousness that is really, I think in one sense, one cannot have any positive outcome of callousness. But what it has done is really taken away the scales from people's eyes. And to some degree, they've been able to see through the bombast, the propaganda, the hollow promises and all those, all those factual statements that have been made over time and again, time and again. And caste composition has become very, very clear. So has the class composition. The kinds of callous remarks we've made about the migratory people, about them walking on the street, about their living there. How many of us have voluntarily gone out to feed anybody? How much of the population has really even thought of itself as obligated to get food? Let alone anything else. We are a ministry of law who are really working very hard. But by and large, they are really seen as a utilitarian commodity of labor or producing things or what will happen when they leave. But the human condition has really bypassed most of India. And that just for me, one of the worst crisis. Apart from the callousness, it has actually removed the fig leaf, in other words, from what middle class things and what the state thinks. But if you look at their own position now, it's the fear of the unknown. Actually, we really don't know what's going to happen. See, when you know something's going to happen, then you get ready for it. We simply don't know sitting in rural India except for NREG and the PDS. And that's why there's so much mobilization today in Rajasthan because of continual lobbying with the state, the government and continually meeting people. I have been forbidden from going out because I'm moving 70. But most of my friends are now actually back there with their masks. So what are the sanitizers? They're going to NREG work sites. We're mobilizing people. They're doing everything despite all the personal risks of, I don't know if there is really a personal risk, but whatever they may be. And what do we see now? Except for NREG and all the well-known right-space legislations, we passed at some point of time. And the hope that the welfare state may function and we can force the government to deliver, there is nothing else. All the tools we knew that we could use, the only tools we are left with are what we've got over the right-space legislation. We can't mobilize. We can't speak out. We can't even project what is wrong in a big public forum. And the challenges have grown. We now are in a new kind of poverty. And this new kind of poverty has to be defined. And I think that's where we would really need the help of the theoretical members of this panel. Because what is poverty? It can no longer be defined in older terms. Poverty today is completely different from the kind of poverty that we so easily identified, say, 30 years ago. So in that kind of new situation, our workers, Rajasthan has, of this 40 lakhs today, we have many of them are migratory workers working on NREG. We gave the largest work force in Northern India for construction work, apart from many others. So all these migratory workers are back now. And they do not see it. It's an irony because migration was always seen as the last resort of joblessness of unemployed. So when you are unemployed, you always say, okay, I'll migrate. You know, I'll go off to Jammu or to Delhi or to Bombay or to Kerala to earn money. But now migration is seen as a horror. So people are coming back. So the flip side of it is, now is the time to really build on Indian NREGA. Now is the time to really build on a rural economic agenda. And Pramod has been talking about it. So has Vijayanan. I've heard both of them. And I also feel, we also feel in the NKSS, it's a good time to expand the NREGA to make this 100 mandatory days of work exist as they have always been. Which is, which is an entitlement, which is people driven, which is, you know, which creates assets for the people. But the rest of the days will have to be labor center. I mean, we can't again take them to bondage. We can't take them again to being part of a system where they are helpless, but that they have the option to opt for any other kind of cottage industries. Maybe you have working on the agricultural farm. Chief Minister Punjab has actually written to the Prime Minister today saying that he wants NREGA to be allowed to work, people on NREGA to be allowed to work on agricultural work. Because he says otherwise Punjab's entire agricultural work will just collapse. So if so on what terms does the worker actually opt to work or does or do they get mandated to work in a particular place without an option of change. But if they could do that, then it's a labor camp. If you use modern language, if you use our ancient system, then they are bonded, you know, and that we don't want. So it's a very, very good time. And I think I'm very glad that there's Hush and there's Pramod, there's Joyti and there's Gopal and there's Vidyaan. That we can all sit together and brainstorm to see how exactly these new systems are going to function. And I think it's a very good time. We also need an urban employment guarantee about which again, I think all of us I mentioned before, we have all agreed, but we'll also probably have to think of the NGNREG as it is today to go into DNC class municipalities, which are really small towns. They call themselves small towns but they live like villages. So from the hinterland maybe they can draw people. We prevent these large scale migration to metropolises. They go and work in the hinterland in the small Kasbah towns, which we call Kasbah towns in northern India, these small towns. And there they can get employment in small production factories. And self-employment should become a very important thing, including people who push these hand cuts. You know, people who are hawkers. All this should be seen as self-employment and I think a whole range of new possibilities will emerge. And I think it's a time we must all push because this push will take us into a place where we can re-establish all that we have lost. Possibly in the last so many years. And of course the labour laws, if we do not bring that into the centre of our debate, we lose everything. So we'll have to reclaim and fight for labour laws. And today more important than even bargaining power is fighting for basic social and economic rights. And social rights and economic rights are vitally important. And today it's Eid. So Eid Mubarak to all of you. It is an important day for all of us to re-establish that we will not bring in the communal agenda. We're not bringing in the communalisation, not only of Covid, but the communalisation of everything else we know. Of Nerega, of food security, of hawkers. People are not buying from people who are Muslims. The first thing they've been doing in Badime is to ask the name of the individuals selling vegetables. Because if you have a Muslim name, they're not buying vegetables. So we have a lot of work ahead. But I think it's not in the nature of an activist to lose hope. So I think the NPSS has been madly trying to see what else it can do. And how it can work it. Because if we lose hope and sit down, then it's the final victory of people who want us completely destroyed. The ideas we all hold together completely destroyed. So we have to fight back. So I'll stop now this optimistic note that we must and have to fight back. And the question only is how? Thank you so much, Arna. What you said at the earlier part of your presentation, I remember conversations with you about your childhood memories of just after partition. And you did say it was a time of hope. You also said it was a time when people with great dignity rebuilt their lives in very difficult circumstances. And maybe what you, the latter part of what you were saying was about, you know, which is really what we'll come back to in the third part of the discussion today is what we do in the future. How do we help rebuild with hope and with dignity? And I think those are very important questions as well. May bring in Patrick at this stage. Patrick's been one of the most sort of perceptive scholars of Indian society from a distance. How do you see and understand the crisis? Of course you have the crisis in America to compare with. And it would be interesting to see how do you see the crisis in India? How does it compare with what you see around in the United States? Patrick, you're muted, sorry, still muted. Thank you, Arsh. And thank you to the center for organizing this extraordinary panel. And let me just say how honored I am to be part of this amazing conversation. Yeah, I would make four general points, all of which are somewhat comparative. It's been said that this pandemic is a physical exam of the social body. What it's done in India as it has in the United States and other countries with deep-seated inequalities such as Brazil, is it's really laid bare just how deep those fault lines are. And tragically, it's amplified all of those fault lines. So be it the fault lines of class or caste or community, what this pandemic is doing is exasperating those deep-seated inequalities, including the structural economic inequalities that Prabhat already talked about. And what worries me is that beyond the immediate effects, the loss of livelihoods, the hunger, the desperation are the long-term effects. Because if there's one thing we know about inequality is that it's cumulative. So children who are deprived of nutrition today will suffer in the future from stunting. Children who don't go to school, and this is a problem here in the United States as well, the middle class can learn from home and has the resources to manage this crisis. The working class is being adversely impacted on any number of fronts. The being cut off from educational opportunities, the livelihood impact, etc. So it's difficult to exaggerate the long-term cumulative effects of the pandemic on inequality. The second point I would make is that this crisis has exposed underlying institutional weaknesses. And as we look across the world, some countries have had more effective responses and some have had very ineffective responses. And the difference really lies in the degree to which existing institutions can provide social protection and welfare. And so some of the responses in northern Europe in particular have been relatively successful. But in countries that already had weak institutional capacity and relatively weak welfare states, we're seeing the effects amplified. And even within India, the impact is much more dramatic in the north than it is in the south. And Mr. Vijay and no doubt can talk to us a little bit about Kerala, which is at least a source of some optimism in these really difficult times. And those institutional weaknesses are having absolutely debilitating effects because as Aruna and as Harsh have already underscored, there's a loss of faith in public institutions. And again, here the comparative differences are striking. The response in Kerala, which has been so successful not only in flattening the curve, but also addressing the welfare crisis, is a response that's been built on the strength of people's trust in public action and public institutions and faith and political leadership. In most of the rest of the country, quite the opposite has happened. Given the callousness and the indifference of the government, people are losing faith in institutions. And once you lose that trust, it's incredibly difficult to rebuild trust. And so that's a very big concern as well. And then the final point I'd simply underscore is this is also turning out to be a crisis of democracy. And I'll say a little bit more about this later. But in the United States and in Brazil, as bad as the crisis has been, at least it has triggered some political pushback with upcoming elections in the United States. There's at least some hope in a change of regime. And Bolsonaro is finding himself in a very deep political crisis because of his response to the pandemic. In India, the central government has taken advantage of this crisis to double down on its repression of civil society. And again, that amplifies the problem of trust. But also what it simply does is undermine the overall capacity of the state to provide a coordinated response to this crisis. And this isn't just a crisis of the immediate moment, of course. It's a crisis that's going to be with us for years. And without some coordinated approach from the center, it's difficult to see how the worst of the welfare effects will ever be addressed. And the long-term erosion in faith in democratic institutions and principles is something that's really extremely alarming. Thank you, Patrick. I think I agree with every word. The crisis has shown a pandemic in a highly unequal society. It only exacerbates those inequalities. Your caution that these inequalities and the consequences of it will last across generations is something I hadn't thought of as clearly as you said it. And I think that that is even more worrying that it's not long after this crisis passes. People who have suffered injustice at this moment are going to bear the consequences of it for a long time. Your reminder about the loss of faith in institutions and in democratic institutions will also last for a long time. And I think that's a truly, truly worrying aspect of the crisis. And thank you for bringing these in. I'll call in Joyati now, please. You know, you've heard a lot. What is your reflection on what really is the gravity and the nature of our crisis? Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Harsh. You know, I completely agree with everything that's been said. This is absolutely by far the greatest crisis I've certainly experienced and certainly the greatest crisis I believe in independent India. And it is going to be something which has very, very severe effects, as Patrick said, as Prabhupada said, over the medium term. It's not something that is going to go away tomorrow, the day after, no matter what the government response is. I think people have already made a lot of the important ones. I just want to add one thing, you know, that none of this was really so necessary. And I think that's very important. We're constantly being told that the pandemic has done it. No, the pandemic has not done it. The government response has done it. We did not have to have such a brutal lockdown imposed at Fora's notice. No other country did that. Our neighbors all gave a week's notice, five days notice, 10 days notice. We could have actually enabled migrants to go back. We could have informed people that this was going to happen. We could have done it more gradually, even if we wanted to do it at once. We could have given sufficient advance notice to state governments, to the people in general, to allow them to make some kind of arrangement. We could have warned them that they're going to lose all their income for at least a month, possibly longer. Which is what actually the government was thinking and knew full well when it said three weeks that it was going to be longer and so on. We did not have to create the kind of humanitarian catastrophe that we have done. Because by doing that, not only have we generated an economic depression of an unprecedented proportion, which is going to take massive, massive public expenditure to generate any kind of recovery. But we've also created a worsening public health situation. If we had allowed migrants to go back earlier, we would not have the kind of massive spread of infection that we're now seeing across the hinterlands and in the states that really don't have health infrastructure. In Bihar, in Uttar Pradesh and so on, the rates of the increase of infection are so rapid now. And they're going to be spreading to villages where there is really no health facility to speak of. So we've kind of destroyed it on both levels. The state action has actually damaged the economy massively, but it has also added to the public health disaster. And I think it's important to note that it was not necessary. It's a critical thing because we keep saying it's an act of God if you like. It was a pandemic. No, it was the policy response that did it. The next thing I just wanted to point out is this whole issue of the migration, the massive distress migration that we've seen in the past migration. And the general discussion in the mainstream media is all about, oh, will they come back? Will we get the people to do our construction activities? Will our manufacturing be able to? And so it's all around that. And the overall attitude seems to be, which comes, I think, from the deep inequality that Brahmada mentioned and the deep caste and class discrimination that is so embedded in our society. The attitude seems to be that if you make things rough enough for them and wherever they are, they will come back. They'll have no option and they will be forced to work on whatever terms because that is, you know, finally they'll have to survive. Now, it is true that there might be some element of that in the short term, because things are going to be bad in the villages, even with an expansion of energy, even with, you know, and at the moment I can't even see that the government will allow much of an expansion. They have only brought up the expenditure to the level that it was supposed to be at the beginning of this financial year that our estimate of the requirement was 102 lakh crore. Okay. So already, you know, it was, they haven't really put out sufficient money for energy in the for the rest of the year. So we don't know whether it will genuinely expand. And clearly, it's going to be an extremely deep depression in both rural and urban India for the foreseeable future. If the government does not spend and at the moment again, there is no indication that it will spend. Actually, the fiscal stimulus is not 1% of GDP, which is what everyone is saying. It's actually negative. I think this everyone has to get this in their heads that the central government is not allowing state governments to spend. State governments are constrained by the tax revenues they can raise. They will not be able to increase their spending beyond the point what they could possibly do is shift some money around here to there. Over the period, their spending will fall. There is every indication that the central government also intends to let its expenditure more or less respond to the fact that its tax revenues are coming down. So in fact, the fiscal stimulus may well be negative for this economy, not positive. We are therefore looking at a major contraction. Now, in that kind of a situation, honestly, I think all predictions are are up for grabs. You know, I don't think we are in a position to know what this level of distress does for a society for a quality. Because we have never experienced. I don't think this level of distress may be bangles. I mean, but again, it was localized relatively. We are going to see such unimaginable distress that I really do not think that even the government can anticipate fully, even their attempts to control dissent right now, lock up a number of people who are engaged in peaceful protest world trying to uphold the Constitution etc. Those attempts also may not be adequate to meet the kind of complete chaos that is likely to emerge from such a major, major destruction of the economy. So I don't want to sound apocalyptic, but I really think that this was a man made catastrophe. And I say men advisedly to men who did it. It was a man made catastrophe. It was not generated by a virus. It is being worsened by policy actions of the government at present. And it is leading to outcomes that I think we simply cannot anticipate because there's so extreme. I can't again agree with you more. I wanted to underline that it's not just the outcome of public policy choices that have been made now. It is also the outcome of public policies that have made in the past and really three most important ones. I think one of them is the complete destruction of whatever public health system we had. I think that is one consequence. I mean 80% of doctors work in the private sector, 60% of beds are in the private sector and they've completely stopped contributing at this point of time. I was reading that two thirds of the districts don't have a single testing facilities, two thirds of the districts. That's where the virus is going to spread. So these are public policy choices that we've made in the past. Our unwillingness to give any kind of social rights and labor rights to the large mass of the working poor is the second segment. And the third is the huge gaps that we've left in our food security arrangements. I think that these are public policy failures of the past and now the choice of the lockdown. All of them have created and it is man made and terrifying for that reason. Vijayanan, I don't know how you're going to come into this discussion. We do want to know about Kerala and we do want to learn from it at latter parts of this discussion. But just in terms of the crisis, you also have a lot of workers in Kerala and just even through their eyes, how do you see this crisis? You'll have to unmute. One thing that you can say is that it's been a rapid downward spiral pulling in more sectors of development, more people, more areas and nobody knows where it's going. It's worsening, though in outward figures it may not look so bad. And all in a situation of economic decline, not spree, joblessness, growing inequality, not only a wealth income but also of influence and power and avoidable socio-political tension. So in my young days, we had learned that the ratchet effect of different factors of poverty. Now this is working in the whole economy, the whole ratchet effect and it's pulling it down. That's my impression. And how did we ease there? I thought I'll spend a couple of minutes on that. As was mentioned, delayed response. People have not highlighted that. We're talking about Kerala on 12th of January. Kerala alerted its rapid response force, 12th of January. And here we come in the middle of it. And two months for a nation. Everybody talks about war. 25th of March. But they started speaking around 15th March. Then sudden lockdown has been mentioned. And in a recent webinar, Professor Abhijit Sen said, we announce then think and then plan. That seems to be the new sequence that is extremely dangerous. And something which I've been noticing in government, I could even see it before 2014 also. Equitable development is not in the political intellectual discourse and even asking for basic rights. Look, you look like a math fellow. And the sole fake focus these days, even Kerala got into the bandwagon briefly without forgetting its other aspects, ease of doing business. So that is our sole focus. And then, as you mentioned, neglect of human development. Public health. And just imagine the suggestion of EVIO that your district hospitals be privatized. Talking of district hospitals, it's not that we have capacity, we have capacity. But if you have the essential infrastructure, you can ramble the capacity. When Nipah struck Kerala, Kerala did not have a single lab in the whole state. We had to go to all the way to Pune. And within one month of COVID, 18 centers have started, 16 of them in public. So if government wants with limited resources, you can. That's a big lesson from Kerala. Not that Kerala is one of the most physically. And something which is worrying is an informalization of the labor relations. And I would bring the trade unions. We are focusing on the organized permanent workers and not on the contract labor. And manager is still bringing some help. And another thing which is recently happening is a forced so-called formalization of the informal economy through technology and tax and not through building capacity, scaling and diversifying. So it's a very artificial kind of formalization which is rattling the MSME. I can see it even in Kerala. And of course, total weakening of the labor laws and social protection and the public's. And another thing which is a recent, very recent thing, probably best revealed in the F1's features these days. We have equated public sector reform to privatization. It's an extreme step. Earlier we thought we repressed competition and all those things were there. Now nothing is there. And what is even worrying? Failure of the Guardian Institutions, Human Rights Commission, SDHC Commission. And then judicial activism is almost dead, especially vis-à-vis government and vis-à-vis poor persons' rights. And another thing which has not been followed, I've worked in the plan for a long time. Killing the plan was suicide. Suicide. SCSP, TSP, minorities, persons with disabilities, they all linked to the plan. Planning was nothing great in India for a long time. But at least there could be some discussion on what are the priorities, some data coming up, knowing where the weakness is like, that we have lost. And another important thing which India has no local government system except Kerala to some extent or not. West Bengal is not that well-rooted. And then, of course, you mentioned it. See, shrinking space of civil society and independent media and worse is class interest can be killed through communal interest. It's extremely dangerous. And where we go? At least at this time, I thought there will be a moment for workers, moment for labour, moment for the poor. But then you forget that essential human thing and go back to a very primitive kind of fate. That's all the points I wanted to make at this point. All of that very, very useful. How did we come here through a whole set of failures? Well beyond the three that I had listed and thank you. The second question, and I find that we spent a lot of time on the first quite rightly. The second is an easy one, which is how do you evaluate what the government has done? And I propose that we go through it much faster because the last part of the discussion is really what you feel needs to be done. So maybe a quick, you know, more rapid-fire kind of round on what do you think, how do you evaluate the government's economic package, its attempts to rebuild the economy? Well, you know, the government has literally done nothing by way of rebuilding the economy. In fact, it is quite right. If anything, its impact would be negative. That basically, when you look at the package, much of it is simply credit offers making credit available to various sectors. Now, you know, Keynes had had a remark earlier. He said that you can truncate a boom either through a shortage of demand or through a shortage of credit. But you cannot, but for truncating a slump, you require both, not either. So in the absence of demand, if you simply make a credit offer, you would not even have takers of the credit. As a result, what the government has done really is something which amounts to nothing. If you look at the total amount, which the government is in all its various different pronouncements, which the government is making available, through fiscal means it comes to less than 1% or just about 1% of the GDP. The whole idea now is to stimulate demand and the government seems almost to be unaware of it. Or even if they're aware, they're too afraid of credit rating agencies and global finance to be able to do anything about it. Yeah. So Gopal Ji? Thanks. So the response has been very meager, I would say, in terms of reaching out to people, providing facilities to the people. What we had to understand is the structural informatics that cannot be rectified by the government. For example, in Mumbai, slums are so much saturated and congested that intervening there with some promise of medicine and health services becomes absolutely difficult. So what happens, unfortunately, is that it is not the government, it is the people who are held responsible for the worsening of the crisis. So in a way, very discursively, the responsibility is being individualized. It is not the government, but the individuals who are responsible, they are not keeping social distancing, they are not following rules and all that. So, and therefore, I think to really, there's a lack of rationality among the people, therefore, you have to bring rationality from outside through police and other mechanisms. So I think this is a bit of a difficult issue. I mean, how to understand, how to evaluate the performance of the government is also tied up with the response with other people. What is important in this regard is to see that the government is not acknowledging that it has certain structural limitations to handle the crisis in terms of conducting phase, in terms of providing infrastructure, in terms of actually regulating food and other medicinal facilities to the people. So there is a problem with the government, no doubt about it. But the real problem is that the government is not able to actually comprehend the way it has to really reach out to the people and confront the crisis. For example, if there's one person calling from a house and the government doctor is going, he finds 70 people waiting for the treatment. That is a very dicey situation in a way. So I think it's very difficult to really make a very final comment on the assessment of the government. In simpler words, the government seems pretty clueless that whether it is on the economic or on the health, I mean, I really find them saying one thing one day, saying the opposite thing another day and seeming completely confused apart from everything else. Aruna, would you like to just do a quick evaluation of what the government is? Quickly, of course, unemployment is one huge thing which they've done nothing about. What the money that they've given to NRGA has just, as Joyati said, appears much more than it really is. But the point is that the push from below is so hard now that there's something giving in at least in the state government levels. Let's see how far it goes, but it's not a great promise. We have to fight for employment. Let's look at food security. What about those 77 million tons of food grains? What have we got? Only 8 crore vibrant workers have got 5 kilos each. It's a lot. What have we got? One million tons out of the 77 million tons. How does the 77 million tons? So where is the food security? Why can't they distribute food to people who are hungry and unemployed? And there's no possibility of employment here. Full employment. So I think you take that and you take health. They're not getting attention. Even COVID patients or possible COVID patients, there's no testing and normal natural illnesses are causing deaths in the villages because people are not able to access health. So we really need to look at the National Health Service. We really need to look at all these fundamental basic things that they're not getting. I'm not even going to schooling, which is such a huge disaster. Children have all lost one whole year because they can't do digital education. They can't do digital exams. Most of the children can't access them. So they've really lost a year and I don't know what else they've lost. So I really think one great fear that we all have and had, which is that this kind of new attitude of the state of the government. So every single issue is going to set us back to begin fighting at the baseline for our basic rights. And that it thrusters back there. So I think if you look at food health, literacy, education, we are back almost square one in many cases. So I think that would, I would really say what's worrying people in the villages the most. Patrick, your evaluation. Yeah, I mean, I think all the key points have already been made. So let me just quickly put this into some comparative perspective. The obvious countries that one would want to compare India to are the United States and Brazil. Those are the two other very large federal democracies. And all three are currently governed by regimes that have clear autocratic tendencies. And I think one of the lessons of all this is that autocratic regimes are terrible at dealing with crises like this. And for a number of reasons. I mean, first, they have tunnel vision. They speak mostly to their supporters, which and have a lack of empathy. So the response has not been one driven by empathy and a sense of solidarity. It's been driven by short term narrow political calculations of playing to your base. And we've seen that with Trump and Bolsonaro and with the center in India. There's a lack of willingness to work with subnational governments and more than anything else. The lack of coordination proceeding the lockdown was catastrophic. Not consulting with chief ministers before locking down the economy with pure madness. Well, likewise in the United States, Trump has had a completely hostile attitude to governors and has even tried to assert authorities that he doesn't have. And Bolsonaro has literally accused governors in Brazil who have tried to address the pandemic as being communists and banditos. You know, the Brazilian version of urban nexal like space. So the great truck, you know, for those who had any kind of illusions that authoritarian regimes are better at handling crises. I would hope that they are now completely disillusioned by just how irresponsible and ineffective these increasingly autocratic regimes have been. As I said earlier, though, the one silver lining in the United States and in Brazil is that neither Trump nor Bolsonaro control the legislature and they haven't been able to repress civil society. So Brazil has actually pushed through a basic income grant that's quite generous at the behest of civil society through the legislature. And the United States is doing something I'd never thought I'd see in my adult life is it's actually reconverting itself to Keynesianism and trying to prime pump the economy. And again, largely because the Democrats unfortunately in India, you know, Modi has near hegemonic powers at the central level. And so there's really no pushback and that to me is more worrisome than anything else. Yeah, well, Jyoti. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I think Robert already highlighted the sheer macroeconomic stupidity so far. And of course, the meaninglessness of this so-called big package, the Atman-Irbar apiana, what kind of package. I just want to pick up, you know, just to add to that, what is so evident throughout this two months really it has really been very, very striking the sheer caste class and gender bias of this government. Every single action that the class differentiation has been so evident, you know, whether it is the way you welcome migrants from abroad and how you deal with migrants within your country, attitude to plane travel, vis-à-vis train travel, attitude to, you know, how people are supposed to do social, so-called social distancing and the norms that you're supposed to comply with. The implications for women, the way you treat your frontline workers, your, you know, Angan mari workers and Ashas without providing them any protection whatsoever. And how you, how, of course, the government and in turn, taking a cue from that society takes all of that for granted does not factor in any of the concerns that women particularly would have, whether in imposing particular policies or in how you propose to treat the pandemic. I think what has really been striking is how open, blatant and explicit it has been, which I think is unlike pretty much every other country, at least everywhere else you're trying to hide it a little bit. Here it's now out there open. And of course, we're the only country that has successfully managed to give the virus a religious favor, right? We've communalized the virus as well. So I think in addition to the macroeconomic stupidity, because it is stupid, they will themselves regret this lack of spending now. There is this feeling that now you can get away with anything. You can be the way you actually are. I mean, you know, the gloves are off. You don't have to pretend anymore. You are an upper caste patriarchal upper class government, you know, and you're going to be that way. I heard three, four days back somebody, a government spokesman, making a theory out of this saying that we did consciously avoided strengthening demand and something else is there, but nobody has taken pains to explain how this 20 lakh will stream out into the economy. It's common sense, even ideologically you tell, but nobody has done it. So that's quite shocking when you're announcing 20 lakhs and you're not able to say what they expect to reach where. And in an emergency, basic thing is you spend on your immediate needs. And here is a health need. There is no kind of estimating what is required. We all have done it for simple fleets, estimating what compensating we are spending. It is a mandate under the National Disaster Management Act not being passed. So 15,000 crore, 15,000 crore was announced, but details I couldn't see so far. Then states, as is mentioned by Patrick, they have not taken them into trust. They have spent most of the money. Health is a state responsibility. They have allowed them to borrow with conditions for the first time in history. It goes against fiscal federalism and conditions are which you impose. And state is borrowing to the market, not from the RBA at market rates and going to repay from its own revenues. So that condition and no grants to states. And SDGs, self-help groups, could have been a big source. It was a bogus thing that without collateral you can borrow 20 lakhs. They are not even getting one lakh. So had some 2000 rupees loan being given to SDGs members, that itself would have boosted because women are wise vendors in times of crisis. And India now has 6.8 million SDGs. Nothing for agriculture. Fortunately that's the only sector which is more or less unscathed. So prices are low. It is not collapsed. Everything else is collapsed. But something we should have gone for agriculture, it has not gone. They are only paying what they had promised earlier to farmers. So many things could be done in agriculture. And this government is known for its public works. And no additional public work in rural areas or urban areas. At least we could have absorbed the construction sector. So agriculture and constructivist provide the bottom thing for employment has not been tested. And of course it's a belief. I was 2 years in Delhi. The belief is that social security is a private function of the family and society and not a public function. That was also done. And all of us are welcome, but it is only 40,000 crores in cash. No labour budget revision, no inclusion of new workers and no assurance that 100 days will be given. That alone is required. I'm not asking for more than 100. The government will say, if 100 is required, we will give 100 and consider later. That assurance is not there. Some money is there. Thank you. Thank you. The most important part of the conversation really is what you think needs to be done. I know that it's a bit like talking in the air when you know that we're having a government of the kind that Joyti described so clearly. And it's completely unlikely to listen to any of this. But we do have state governments and I do think as the crisis deepens, there will be a desperation to look for answers. And I think we need to have faith and think very carefully about what needs to be done. And really what needs to be done is rebuilding the economy with equity. What do we do for restoring social rights and labour rights? What do we do with regard to the health crisis? And I think some of the whole psychosocial crisis that Gopal spoke about and others, the political crisis as well of democracy that Patrick spoke about. What do we do about all of these? And it's going to be a tough one because we have to go around and all of us would value distinct all of you. So if you could pick three or four critical things and if you hear somebody saying it before you, then you could come on to something else. Dealing with the economic crisis, the whole question of social and labour rights, the health pandemic extending now into the countryside which has no facilities whatsoever of testing and tracing and cure. And the larger social and political collapse of faith and institutions, of the independence of institutions, of democracy, of communal targeting, of gender violence growing and marginalization. It's a huge, it is a huge unprecedented crisis. We need to think and really what would be the three things each of you would say that we need to do possibly Prabhat, would you like to start? You know, I agree that the government is going to do nothing of the sort that we would be talking about here. But on the other hand, it's very important to actually establish what is possible, in which case you can actually have people demanding it. Jayati is absolutely right about the extreme open class caste bias of the government and patriarchal bias of the government. In fact, I would say the government which is very strongly moving in a fascist direction and the idea would be to actually suggest an alternative around which then people can be mobilized. Jayati and I did a calculation which actually says that if you have just 2% tax on the wealth of the top 1% of the country's population and an accompanying inheritance tax that actually takes away one third of what is bequipped every year, then you'd be able to generate 10% of the total GDP as expenditure. And that would be quite enough to finance five basic rights, the right to food, employment, healthcare, you know, free publicly funded healthcare, free publicly funded education and two pensions. So the point is that fiscally it is possible for us to have an alternative. And what is more, of course, once you have this alternative, then the nature of development itself would have to be different. I think, given the fact that large numbers of people have gone back to the countryside, this may be actually a good time to think in terms of an alternative development strategy that doesn't believe in shifting large numbers of people from the villages to the towns in order to give them employment but rather to bring employment to them where they are. So, and that's perfectly possible. That's perfectly possible with rural enterprises, small scale enterprises, the kind of enterprises that in China you had the township and village enterprises and so on. We could think of a completely different strategy that is actually based on rapid growth of the agricultural sector. You know, we think in terms of export led industrialization as being synonymous with exporting to other countries. But what about industry exporting to agriculture, in which case agricultural output has to be sufficiently enlarged. So you'd have to have the rights, you'd have to have an alternative pattern of development. It is fiscally possible. It has to be made socially and politically possible and that can be done only by mobilizing the people around an alternative against the kind of policy that are being pursued. In other words, the feasibility, social and political is not something we should be worrying about is existence. We have to create the feasibility. And the challenge of doing that in times of authoritarian lockdowns and social distancing and the breakdown of even existing social solidarities of the kind that we saw and a completely enfeebled opposition. But it is the people of India I think that have to rise to this. Gopal, what were the three things that you would stress? In terms of the alternative framework to deal with the crisis, the immediate thing is to really, as people are suggesting, is to give money to the people so that they can survive immediately. They do not really get them, push them into some kind of deeper depression and frustration. That's point one. So I think money going into the hands of people is one immediately urgently required task. Second, and we have been saying that you require to really achieve a development, even development with equity, justice and dignity, all that. That means you have to start from the local village where you have enough opportunities where people can really find their job, meaningful job. So it may not really lead to some kind of a distressed migration. Now we see the, we have seen the impact of distressed migration. Actually, cities being crowded by migration and people actually allow cities to be crowded as long as this crowd really helps to accumulate more profit. So there is actually some kind of a politics of allowing people to come into the cities, but not looking at an even development or that's the skewed development that we have in this country. Point two is that what kind of equity you want to urge in the future? I mean, how to put it cynically, what kind of inability you will have to have in future? As it's going to be, for example, pandemic has done some kind of a levering impact. The social basis of inequality and poverty has been expanded, it has expanded across cost. Now, earlier you had Wandy, the village, working in the sanitation and sewage system and you know the budget is taking place every time. But this time you find that because of the loss of employment, people from other castes are also coming and doing the job. Now they also have a very, they also attach a very different meaning, now it is really below the dignity to do this. I mean, they are not sensitive about others' dignity actually. Gopal, you are a little frozen. No, no, I am, I am, let me see. Okay, okay, yeah, please. So I'll just reference you. So I think what would be the nature of this equality or inequality in the future? If you really want to have equality, you have to remove the, remove these spaces of opportunities which are actually dirty spaces like scavenging and all that. So that no one is actually pushed beyond the human world. No one is actually treated as below the human world. So that is, that is much longer than a plan of action. It's not an immediate policy matter now. It's a long time process where you have to actually. I would like to go out for the discussion that, you know, what is this entitlement? I think entitlement was at the time in the discussion earlier. Now, Locke and the John Locke, there's a debate as you know, this debate between John, this debate between John Locke and Robert Nossick. An entitlement issue has been, has been at the core of the debate, at the center of the debate. Now, in our country, what is entitlement? Having actually a right to clean somebody's shit is your entitlement. Is it your entitlement? And so I think Locke would say you soil with, you know, when you fix your labor with soil, you get your right, you get your entitlement. But here, the Dalits are actually fixing the labor with night soil. Is that an entitlement? How are you going to change this in the future? It's the lead question, I think. And so I think the ability to impact the industry in inequality has to be, has to be taken into consideration why you are actually planning for a long term, remaking of the economy. The other point I would like to make is that, you know, in the pandemic technology has actually not resolved the question of inequality. Actually, it has deepened the question of inequality. For example, education, if you want to conduct classes, online classes, you require the conditions to access those classes. But for that condition, you require electricity, you require Wi-Fi, you require everything there. Then when you can meaningfully get into the mode. But that is not that you're talking about. So that inequality is actually inbuilt into a vision of the technology, the technological development. All this we have to actually think in order to really create some kind of equity in the future. The last point I would make is about the injustice question. Now, injustice actually is your, actually you are in a way, it's intergenerational injustice. It's not generational justice. You are actually handing over injustice from one generation to another generation. That is to say people from certain castes are actually there in the sky waging and other sanitary work for generations together. Now they have established their entitlement. They don't allow other people to enter this thing. Now if this is the development, economic development you want to achieve, I think this is not along the egalitarian normative, dignified way of planning your economy. I think these are three very important issues that we have to think. Whenever you are planning for better economy or reformulated economy. Absolutely. The social aspects of off equality. I don't know what would you, what are the three things you'd. I would say that the most critical thing today is to mobilize. The people who have mobilized and got huge benefits for all of us in the past have been the working class, the workers, the women who have been at the worst end of every single stick. So today we need to go back to the migrants, we have to go back to the workers and we have to look at new forms of unionization to fight against all these restrictions on labor, the various other ways in which their entire life's work for many of them has been nullified. We have to also fight somewhere for mobility. The worst thing that has happened to us today that we are all trapped and I am amazed at how quietly we have all gone into our little mess. None of us is questioning whether this COVID nearly is such a huge horrible phenomenon that we all have to give up all sense of mobility. And this Arugya Setu has now become an absolutely impossible, absolute compulsion because otherwise you can't travel. You can't get into a train, you can't get into a plane and any bookings you want to do anywhere asked for an Arugya Setu. I think this control of our mobility through various systems is something which affects all of us from the poorest worker to anybody else. So I think mobilization, mobility and the another part of that whole syndrome is that we have to look at methods of self-sufficiency now in our local areas. That's why NREGA and the local fights are critical because you can begin them today. You look at your self-sufficiency in employment, you look at your self-sufficiency in food, you look at various things which you can start trying to quarrel for and fight immediately. And then you build the larger dreams but those have to be immediate dreams. We also all of us have to look at transparency as a very important right we all got which has been corroded from the PM care which has now gone completely under wrap. And even the CAG can't look at what's happening with the PM care fund and PM cares or PM care. To the last thing that's happening with us in our own areas, everything is going in two areas of complete oblivion where we can't really get any information out. So that transparency and information battle somehow comes into the center of the NREGA, center of the demand for attention to health, center of the demand for everything and we have to get back to that somehow the other. And we also need to know what the governments are planning for us. You know some kind of complete miasma and blindness, we really don't know what's happening and that is the most fearful thing. And I think we'll have to start demanding that the plans must be put in the public domain part of our transparency campaigns, but also bringing back the whole notion of a federal system of consulting people and also of the notion of a welfare state, the notion of a planned economy. There's so many things that follow when you start reading the debate into the public domain, but what are the solutions whether the heart of it is the person who is suffering the most is the worker, the woman and the person who has lost everything because of these extraordinary circumstances on which they were given four hours to wrap up and go the millions which were being stranded and they will have to tell us and we'll have to start listening to them. The challenge for all of us is how do we get to this when we are all isolated and absolutely forbidden to move. So mobility and mobilization, I would say are critical factors just now immediately for public action. Perfect Patrick, your your and again, taking a larger international perspective. Yeah, well I want to build directly on Aruna's comments. I mean, I think we all understand that rights, the effectiveness of rights depend on two things. On the one hand, it depends on the capacity of individuals and collectives to mobilize to claim their rights to demand their rights. On the other hand, it depends on the capacity of the state at all levels from the center all the way to the local to respond to those rights and to make those rights actionable. And so the the meta narrative here has to be about strengthening, rebuilding and rescaling institutions. And I would say four things if you'll allow me harsh four things have to happen. Decentralized, decentralized, decentralized, decentralized. And I mean four different things. So first to Prabhat's point, you know, the Indian economy is spatially incredibly uneven. It's overly concentrated in large metros. We know those are unsustainable socially, environmentally and in terms of inclusion. And so India needs a much more de concentrated decentralized economy with more local economic development. The center has to decentralize to the states. As Vijayanan said, it's it's the states that manage the line departments that have to deliver both the health and other services that will be required to address the welfare consequences of the pandemic, which is indeed, as Jayati says, man made states themselves have to decentralize to punch ads and municipalities. Those are the key points at which the various rights and services and public actions have to be coordinated. And if those local governments don't have the resources and the capacity and the authority to coordinate line department interventions, you'll never have an effective, effective coordinated response to the pandemic or the capacity to build local welfare institutions. And, you know, as everyone who's been following the case of Kerala knows, and as Vijayanan has already emphasized, it's really the strength of local punch ads and municipalities more than anything else that has allowed Kerala to mobilize so effectively in crushing the curve and addressing the welfare crisis. And then the fourth and final decentralized point is India probably has the weakest frontline state in the world. I mean, just in terms of boots on the ground and the kind of resources and authority and decision making capacity of the frontline state of the nurses, the ungun wadis of the local public actors, there has to be a massive investment in the frontline state. And this is a win-win. It generates employment, but it also generates the kind of labor intensive services that an effective welfare state requires. But both to deal with the pandemic, the surveillance systems, the contact tracing, the building up of local health capacity, but also building out the new welfare infrastructure that's going to be required to address the problems of inequality and poverty and injustice that we've all been focusing on. Jyothi, I know you have to go as well. So just, yeah. Yeah, thank you, Harsh. You know, I'm actually, I think all the important points have been yet already. So I'm just going to use this time to answer some of the questions that have come in specifically on something that I said about how the government's fiscal stimulus this year is actually going to be negative, not positive. I think that needs to be explained a little bit. I didn't say that the package that she announced implied negative spending. But what I do still believe is that what is going to happen over the course of the year is that in all likelihood this government is actually going to spend less than it did last year. So let me explain what I mean. You see, what we need right now as Prabhupada has been pointing out, we really need a major demand stimulus. Okay. And quite, I mean, how that money spent I think has already been elaborated very well, but we have to have the state spending much, much more. No other segment of the economy is in a position to spend now. People don't have money, workers don't have money, households cannot spend, investors are not going to come and invest more in this kind of situation. It's only the government that can spend. They have to spend much more than they did last year just to revive the economy at all. The package that has been announced so far is deeply disturbing because first of all they put in all kinds of things they were already planning to spend, and then they've added a little bit more. That little bit more is probably my fear over the course of the year is that this is just a little bit that they're going to spend in addition, which is at most about one and a half lakh crore. Nothing, right? What people have said, you know, maybe 1% of GDP slightly less than 1% of GDP. Over the course of the year, the tax revenues are going to keep falling because GDP is falling, right? We're looking at at least 15-20% decline this quarter, maybe more. So GDP will fall, the tax revenues will fall, they will feel fiscally constrained, they will start cutting down on other spending. So the net fiscal stimulus over the course of this financial year is probably going to be negative. That is absolutely disastrous. And that means that we are going to get an even worse slump than we would have had otherwise. So clearly, what needs to be done is quite, I mean, of course, these are the broader, you know, bigger issues that have already been raised. But immediately we must demand that the government increases triples, its health spending triples. I think Patrick has already pointed out how we don't, fills all the vacancies in public employment, makes Anganwadi and Asha workers absolutely proper government employees, gives them proper facilities. Does all of the basics that it should have been doing over all this time, but does it immediately? And increases the spending on education because we are really, I don't know, I mentioned it, depriving people of their basic access to education and so on. Dramatic increase in the rural energy and an expansion into urban, all of these things have been mentioned. But the point is we need very significant increases in aggregate spending. It should not be that there's a little bit of a package today, which is actually then eaten into by a reduction in spending over the course of the year. And that is what I genuinely feel having seen what this government has been doing so far. Digena, your two or three points. First point has already been made, strengthening local governments where I see a coalition of the elected local government with the self-help groups, understanding that India is caste system, a lot of corruption in local governments as of now and with civil society organizations supporting. This is emerging in almost all parts of India when we had a discussion on what panchayats are doing now. That is eminently doable and the roots of modern local governments go back to the public health crisis of industrial revolution. So they are very good at it, but now that is shrunk only to sanitation. No, they bring it back to public health and incidentally the BJP has manifesto rights to help people. So we throw it back at them and bring some even a weak right is better than no right. And to get doctors, India produces so many doctors and even China produces doctors for India. So we need just to say to get a registration of the medical council, you need to work for two years in rural hospitals on payment, not free. So that is my first point. Second point is restored plan. Certainly government will not restore plan, but at least as a proxy plan for the social sector, which they may be willing. Schedule caste, schedule tribes and migrants should now be, we have never used migrants as a target group even in India or your welfare and other measures. Now they become a group like anybody else as a vulnerable group which needs a group of measures. And the next point is civil society is now organizing at the local level in loose alliances to come back. So this should be used as an opening to get them back into this. Now will this have a, then also which is mentioned sorry for adding a point. The labor rights have to come back to the agenda, particularly the migrant rights. Will it get political traction? One, states, most of the states are not with the national government. And today UB has announced a migrant commission or whatever it's worth. It's an unbelievable step. So we use that opportunity to focus on these rights and rewrite the code and those kind of things. All these are socially doable, but is it doable physically? And I'm not an expert on physical thing, but what the Americans call the quantitative easing is something where you build. It's just printing notes in different form and that load is the way otherwise incomes will fall. Thank you. Thanks so much, Vijay. For the last quarter of now that we have, I asked the request now Sharon to quickly sort of talk about the kinds of questions that our viewers have raised. And so in your closing remarks, then each of you could make your closing remarks but also address some of the questions. Thanks, Harsh. And thanks all for an extremely thoughtful discussion. We've had received a number of questions on what was said this evening. So basically I bunched them and there are three or four major areas. One is actually seeking response from the panelists on the options that states have. The questions are because all of you have said the center lacks sympathy. So what can the states do to earn revenue other than increasing their borrowing? What choices do states have to address some of the crisis that's erupted and in the states? There's also a question on how do we explain the fact that even when lockdown has opened industries have started working called the way slowly workers have decided to they're choosing to go back to homes. And what explains this? There's also a question about which I've just mentioned about UP government's commission, which of migrant commission. But the question also is that UP government is at the same time also trying to control mobility of workers by saying that states will now have to seek the permission of the UP government before hiring workers from the state. So where is this coming from? And what are the rights implications and what's the constitutional validity of this kind of statement which the UP chief minister has made? And what consequences for the right to mobility of the workers of which Aruna also spoke about. I think if can we just go with the first round of questions and whoever wants to respond and then come back to a second set of questions. So could I please request maybe about that to talk about the options that states have in terms of generating revenue or responding to the crisis which has fallen on their shoulders. You know at this moment the states have very few options because when they signed away their rights to levy indirect taxes by signing on to the GST. Basically there are just three commodities left in which they could to some extent muck about with the rates. One of them they're already doing which is alcohol you know the Delhi government, the Haryana government they're all raising the taxes on alcohol but obviously they are limits to this. Therefore revenue raising on the part of the states having bartered away the rights to do so through the GST is something which is very difficult. Borrowing yes the borrowing limits have been raised recently but you see borrowing has a problem. Borrowing means you borrow at an interest rate. Now that interest rate must be higher than the rate of growth of the state domestic product. If you're not going to fall into a debt trap then a necessary condition is that the GSDP growth rate must be higher than the interest rate at which you borrow. Now you know at this moment most state domestic products are going to experience either zero or even negative growth in the foreseeable future. To the extent that happens borrowing at a positive interest rate from the market is actually going to make things worse for the state governments. The options are extremely limited. As a matter of fact they should demand that they be allowed to borrow from the Reserve Bank of India at zero interest rate that their debt in other words should just be monetized. I think if all the states got together and demanded this then that would have a big impact. Of course not the center would not allow it but on the other hand it would actually focus discussion on the kind of plight of the states and I believe they should demand zero interest borrowing from the Reserve Bank of India. Like the government of India does. Thanks. Aruna would you like to say something about the UP government's recent mentioning that other states will have to take permission to hire workers and what's the validity of such a. There is absolutely no validity but it is a political strategy now that's going to be followed. And I think I'm really afraid that because of the fear psychosis about COVID that most of us as a nation have fallen in line with restrictions on mobility. And I think restricting mobility is the first attempt of a government to control its people because freedom I express my freedom to my freedom of expression speech and my freedom to travel. If I have restricted in my freedom to travel and I'm already restricted in my freedom to express. Then how are we ever going to argue for those larger issues of dissent or disagreement or different points of view of a critique of what the government is doing or what anything we disagree with and the workers. They will be forced to move and their mobility will be forced where they're needed somewhere else. But they will be restricted from going where they want to go. Look at what happened to the migrants. Could they have been a greater tragedy? You first give them four hours and in those four hours you expect them to move and then they want to go home. Look at the kinds of conditions that they were subjected to. Now I really do think that this gives underscores the fascist nature of the state. It underscores the fascist nature inherent in all these controlling mechanisms including industry including all the various people who use the labor. So I don't see any advantage in what he has done. And I do think it's a kind of trailer for what might happen everywhere and through restriction. The first persons will be controlled are the labor. But all other people who have the right to freedom of expression who have already been controlled in many different ways will be further controlled. I do think mobility and the right to freedom and expression and the right to mobilize all go hand in hand. And I think this is one more manifestation of the kinds of restrictions, democratic restrictions will be forced down our seats. So we'll have to resist it, we'll have to fight it, I think. Thanks. A second set of questions is actually around what Prabhada said in one of his comments that maybe we have to rebuild local rural economies and create alternative ways of imagining development in this country or the path of development. And so there are a number of people who are asking this question, how will that happen? What will happen to labor demand in the cities if labor is to be absorbed in agriculture in local industries? How do we see rebuilding rural economies? Are they going to be at the cost of industrialization? What is the vision which you are saying in this context? You know, I'm not against industrialization, I want to make it very clear. I'm simply talking about the fact that industrialization has to be led by the demand that comes from the agricultural sector because that is the way to build a self-reliant economy. It has to be an export led industrialization where export occurs from industry to agriculture, not from industry to all kinds of necessarily abroad because then you are in a race to lower your wages so that you remain competitive internationally and so on. So I'm really visualizing a development strategy where things get turned upside down. That basically agriculture grows on the basis of that there is a demand that you have industrialization arising from that and in the process you actually have a withering away of the distinction between the village and the city. Not that people are transferred from something called a village to something called a mega kind of mega police, which we call the city, but rather the distinction between the two simply disappears. Right. Thanks. Thanks. There's a question for Patrick and also Gopal. Patrick, you talked about, we are seeing sliding back of democracy, pulverizing of civil and political rights of workers and poor people. So in these circumstances, what will be an authoritarian government's response when it has been lost trust and it knows that it has lost it, but it needs to continue to be in power. So what's the future looking for civil rights movements for trade unions for civil society activism. What would you like to say based on what you are seeing across the world. Patrick, you need to unmute yourself. Yeah, no, that's, that's an incredibly important question. There's a running in the United States that the largest opposition party isn't the Democratic Party, it's the state of California. I think one one could make a similar joke in the Indian context that the biggest opposition to the central government are not the opposition political parties, but the states and and Kerala would be an obvious example. There's no doubt that in a crisis like this the the instinct of any autocratic regime is to double down on authoritarianism and that's what we've seen in Brazil that's what we've seen in the United States. In India, in India, it's a little more concerning simply because the BJP is so hegemonic it controls the, the, the, the Prime Minister ship the executive powers but it also controls the Lok Sabha. Whereas in Brazil and the United States there's at least some capacity for counter mobilization and political society but I, I have a lot of faith in Indian civil society members of this panel, the depth of commitment to the Constitution as we saw in the protests, the sheer capacity for innovation and the kind of local alliances that Mr. Vijayanan referred to. So I do have some faith in the capacity of civil society to respond but there's no doubt that what's at stake is not only just the extraordinary injustices and increasing inequalities that we've talked about but the very, the very soul and essence of Indian democracy which is a deep democracy in that it's incredibly decentralized in the nature of the actual practices but of course is being threatened at its very heart given the attacks of the independent civil society. Thanks Gopal, would you like to come in on this question as well? You'll have to unmute Gopal? You'll have to unmute Gopal? Unmute. Yeah, it's fine now. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Can you hear me now? Yes, yes. Okay. Can you do without the state at this point in time? The answer is no, because you require a state to really deal with the crisis but what kind of state do you really want to help? Now it's a very good opportunity for any state to actually reorient itself in favor of the people's demands. The first point that the state has to do is to become really pro-people, pro-humanitarian. That would mean that you must put your compassion before your reason actually. You should immediately intervene and take people walking on the road into the buses and take them to their destination. That is very pragmatic but that is what is required at this point in time. So you require a government which is actually compassionate before it is reasonable to its own policy and its own economic packages. So there is a positive for the state to become pro-people and if it is not becoming pro-people, it is the duty of the civil society to actually mend its ways. And therefore, I think civil society in our country, I don't know whether it is. This is also a question to Patrick. Patrick, we have not a very robust civil society intervention in our country. It is already a poor number of times. Except for the philanthropic approach, it is actually marvelous to help people in distress. And then we appreciate all that help that they have actually given to people in distress and infestation. Now, so the question is, can the state really give more spaces to people, for example, labor, to express their freedom? And you can express your freedom, realize your freedom when you actually have opportunities. Whether opportunities are there at the local level or in the metropolitan. But you should give them enough spaces upon you to really realize their freedom. Otherwise, freedom will remain as a very vacuous, empty, empty concept. So I think there is a responsibility on the civil society and trade unions or post-unions to actually bring necessary normative pressure on the state so that the state doesn't abandon the people and give them assurance, promises to reorient the economy, opportunities. So that there is no, this is I think actually reorienting the state on a very egalitarian life. Now, this is a very theoretical, hypothetical situation. Will they really do? Will they have will power? We have no answer to this. So I think we'll have to actually be very vigilant. Civil society has to be energized and has to be socially vigilant to look after the social rights of the people. I'm just sounding very, very, very theoretical, but at the moment we can really expect the state to actually acquire a new incarnation for itself. The civil society to remain vigilant. I think we're running out of time, but there's one last question which many people have asked in many different ways. Given our capacities, given the capacities of civil society of mobilizing people around real agendas and given the empathy of the state, the union government, should we be redirecting our efforts towards addressing state governments and mobilization efforts in the states? So any final thoughts will be welcome. Can I respond to that? I think the civil society should not even go to state government, they should go to the local government. There they are needed and local action may not be advocacy and rights based initially, but it is rights based silently. They are livelihood, they are social rights and there's a lot of space in India because local governments in 90% of India have no capacity in terms of HR. So this is one way of getting your agenda widespread. And whatever be the deficiencies of panchayats, which Ambedkar has rightly pointed out, this is the only place where social democracy and political democracy can start. Thanks to our 312 groups which are 6 million and elected representatives who are 3 million, there's a huge possibility. And this is a point to Professor Heller, we have been dialoguing that I find Kerala moving from a welfare state to a caring state. So it is possible, even with huge fiscal stress. Thank you. Thanks. May I just start? Yes, Srinu, please. I actually think we have forgotten how to get to people. We get to the people, we get a fund of common sense. We get a fund of possibilities. We also get a method and a structural arrangement to which we can do something. And I think that is why this present government in its astuteness and its cleverness and I don't think it is an intelligent government because it puts folks in so many ways that we can't get to each other and can't talk. So I think primarily there is possible and we should try and get over it. The question is, it's a challenge and we, apart from Zoom and other such virtual media, we'll have to get to places where we can get to the other talk and do something and I think it is possible. Nafsharan? There are more questions but I don't know whether we have now the time. It's already 8 p.m. and we have other people waiting. Diti Mehta will come in now to say a few words and then we have to conclude. So Auditi, on behalf of the Constitution Conduct. Excuse me. Rajesh, can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. Thank you. So it's been absolutely scintillating. I have to really say it's just been breathtaking to hear everybody because everyone is really focused so clearly on what the situation we are facing. I would just say on behalf of our group that perhaps this is a wonderful time as Prabhupada said for just a real visioning of society. He mentioned that, you know, try and think actually of how employment can come to agriculture rather than people from agriculture seeking employment in mega cities and so on. But I think these things have to be fleshed out and what is peasant agriculture in today's context and we have added conditions. What is the craft economy and so on. The second point that I think again everyone has really adequately mentioned is just the fact that democratic rights of civil society of people around the gamut have been completely suppressed and there's been a huge concentration of just any kind of rights any kind of forward movement or any kind of intellectual thought on any anyone's part. So I think these are the two things that I think I would also like to just say that maybe there is need for a, you know, as, as, as Ashish Kothari, Asim Shivasan, they talk about, you know, deep ecology. So what would that be? How is that going to be translated and I think we should start thinking about it. And otherwise, you know, this conversation you've begun, I think I'm looking forward to it. Thank you. So thank you so much, Aditi and thank you my very dear friends. I think it was truly a very, very, very important conversation. I do believe that we are in a moment, not just of unprecedented crisis after independence, but also it's a civilizational crisis. It's not just a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis of the kind of people we are and have become and have allowed ourselves to become. And I think that that we're witnessing a moment for it of moral crisis in this in this civilizational moment. And therefore the new imagination that that that we talked about is extremely valuable. While, while our brothers and sisters in in city slums and city streets and much more in the countryside and in the forests and the coastal regions are going to face what I fear are near famine like conditions. They're going to face the outcome the consequences of the spread of the contagion where there will be no facilities for them to respond. It requires the very best in all of us in this moment of civilizational crisis to stand in true solidarity with them at this moment, but also to ensure to promise ourselves that we will not allow a situation of this kind to recurred in our country. Thank you. Thank you all.