Mahesh Chander Sudan
We, the people of India, have been struggling to fight an unprecedented spread of virus that showed its ugly face in our country on 30 Jan 2020 and continued to mount its human to human transmission across India. It remained limited for some time but spread its tentacles with uncontrollable speed to reach staggering figure of almost 2.5 Lakhs with more than seven thousands fatalities. The COVID-19 affected more than two hundred countries across the globe and is declared Pandemic by World Health Organization. Looking at the transmission journey of Virus in India, it appears that it remained almost negligible till 05 Mar 2020 at a figure of 30 cases and thereupon it accelerated with every passing day to reach the present state to challenge our health infrastructure across the country. Countrywide lockdown imposed on 24 Mar 2020 with short warning of four hours conveys alertness of the system towards an impending holocaust that not only brought nation to grinding halt but crippled entire gamut of economic activities. It is really beyond sanity to accept the delay of 53 days in announcing any sound measure like lockdowns to combat the virus besides isolating positive cases for arresting further transmission.
Latest GDP growth figures for year 2019-20 released by Finance Minister clearly indicate that lockdown across India for last seven days of the financial year impacted growth rate and brought it down to 3.1%. This must alarm us to wake up and prepare for rejuvenating all major sectors of the economy to accelerate their productivity for wining over impending economic crisis. Days ahead are full of challenges on both health and economic fronts. It therefore becomes imperative for Union Government to work out national priorities keeping in mind the ill effects of the pandemic. Sustaining life and livelihood in this pandemic must overtake all other secondary functions of the Government. It is no denying the fact that resources are limited and are required to be handled professionally with absolute commitment for avoiding wasteful expenditure. A critical analysis of our long term acquisition plans without compromise with national security needs to be carried out for weeding out avoidable expenditures to save funds for core economic sectors.
All international deals involving huge capital outflows except for critical defense procurements are to be rescheduled with extended time limits to gain at least one year buffer period of economic relief and few of them may be deferred. Our Finance Minister has put on hold all new Government schemes for one year possibly due to declining Government revenue. This restriction may probably exempt schemes launched to help farmers to boost agriculture sector. Our economy needs a long term plan for revival of growth rather than such piece meal curative attempts.
At this juncture when the entire country is fighting COVID-19 with limited medical infrastructure and no proven therapeutic treatment, we may have to work out ways for deferring/postponing impending legislative elections/by elections due during current calendar year not only to avoid heavy expenditure on these elections but to have some time to settle migrant laborers in their home states for earning two square meals. We are all aware that holding election in our country involves huge expenditure despite all codes of conduct applied by election commission and disruption of normal administrative function of the affected State Government. Political parties contesting these elections may have to hold virtual election rallies in the present pandemic ridden environment that would costs crores and crores of rupees. Let us restrict ourselves to Legislative elections due in the current calendar year for the state of Bihar and UT of J&K. Political activity has already been launched by ruling combine of BJP and JD (U) by holding a virtual rally on 07 Jun 2020 addressed by Amit Shah, the Home Minister of India for voters across the state of Bihar.
The elections are due in Oct/Nov 2020. Such virtual rallies may also be planned for UT of JK in the days to come. Holding such a large virtual rally with latest techno gadgets and required infrastructure for audience across concern state/UT would not only be cost constrained but it would certainly breach laid down domain of ongoing disaster management. Another serious cause of concern is discriminatory affordability of political parties and this would affect the voter in exercising mandate in free and fair manner due to monopolistic election campaign carried out selectively by rich candidates of main stream political parties leaving no scope for Independent candidates and other new political outfits. This will squeeze political landscape of the country reducing multiparty political set up of Indian democracy into a limited political arena. We have hardly managed to control unprecedented migration of poor laborers who suffered loss of employment due to extended lockdowns and resultant closure of industrial units. A large section of most vulnerable workforce underwent painful migration witnessed pan India. The state of Bihar is most affected and the state administration requires time to provide minimum employment opportunity for these disturbed workers. Tasking state administration with onerous task of holding free and fair Assembly elections for almost 7.2 crore voters across 243 assembly constituencies during currency of pandemic may not fetch public appreciation at large. As regards Union Territory of J&K, it may not be feasible to hold Assembly election during 2020 due to ongoing exercise for delimitation of constituencies.
We, the people of India, strongly feel that Assembly Elections of Bihar State Legislature may be postponed due to prevailing circumstances of pandemic and President’s Rule may be imposed under Article 356 of Indian Constitution for six months extendable for another three months. This will help State Administration to combat pandemic more effectively, settle migrant laborers and hold fair and free elections without involving any expenditure on virtual Election Rallies and ensure even ground for all political parties to contest free and fair elections without any visible discrimination in the larger interest of Indian Democracy. Jai Hind, Jai Bharat.
The author is Wg Cdr (Retd)
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