Protecting The Poor From Becoming Poorer

Governments need to take a long-term view of mitigating the health and economic effects of COVID-19

- Krishna Rao

Globally, governments are faced with hard choices in controlling the spread of COVID-19. Prioritising public health through social distancing and population lockdowns comes at a huge economic cost. While there is still considerable uncertainty about how badly India will be affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, there is no uncertainty that the population lockdown will force significant and widespread deprivations on people at the lower end of the income distribution. Within a short time after the population lockdown was imposed in India, the slowdown in economic activity has resulted in the loss of livelihood among the economically vulnerable. Seen another way, economically vulnerable groups are being forced to sacrifice disproportionately more for the better health of society. COVID-19 and its control measures will affect the health, human capital, and income of vulnerable populations in multiple ways over the short and long term. To mitigate these deprivations, it is necessary for government safety net programmes to provide broad-based long-term support focused on specific vulnerable populations.

Short- and long-term effects