Corporate Covid Responsibility

Companies are channelising a big chunk of their CSR money towards the coronavirus response, leaving initiatives for other social causes scrambling to stay afloat

- Divya J Shekhar

Drawing from the experience of working in the social sector for over 20 years, and now in the tribal regions of Odisha and Jharkhand, Liby Johnson says people in these villages—including migrant workers who have come back home from the metros—will start feeling the pinch of the coronavirus pandemic more severely only by August.

State governments had sprung into action since the lockdown was first enforced in March, ensuring that the public distribution systems supplied food to people. Johnson, whose non-profit Gram Vikas works with about 1,500 villages to secure water, sanitation and rural livelihoods, says the villagers had managed to get sufficient food at home in April and May.

This security might not last, he says, because of a few challenges: First, cash income has reduced since public work through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and other schemes had stopped during the lockdown. Second, the 20 percent increase in village population (as per Johnson’s estimates from the regions he works in) due to reverse migration will put additional pressure on drinking water, sanitation, unpaid domestic labour for women, and housing, among other resources. “Third, fatigue will set in within the government system in a month or so, after which food supply and other essential services will not reach the poor easily,” he says.