Sachin Bansal, former chief executive and co-founder of now Walmart-owned Flipkart, on Wednesday stressing on the need “to open up the economy” with the slowdown in Covid growth, said that people who want to move out for work should be allowed with necessary precautions in place. Bansal tweeted that people would have to learn to live with the virus as “We can’t lock ourselves up for 2 years in homes waiting for a vaccine. India can’t make use of the opportunities if our most productive people are locked in their homes.”
“Whoever wants to stay at home can stay. And for folks who are venturing out should maintain precautions but allowed to work if they wish to,” he said. Bansal’s comments come amid economies globally reel under the Covid impact. The World Bank had earlier this month in its South Asia Economic Focus Spring 2020 report had said India’s GDP is expected to range between 1.5 and 2.8 per cent in the current financial year. “This would come after already disappointing growth rates in previous years. The green shoots of a rebound that were observable at the end of 2019 have been overtaken by the negative impacts of the global crisis,” the report noted. This is likely to be the slowest growth since the 1991 economic liberalisation.
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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has also cut its growth projections for India from 5.8 per cent projected in January to 1.9 per cent for the new financial year 2020-21. The global economy is also likely to contract by 3 per cent due to the Coronavirus.
The country has been under lockdown since March 24 that as the Covid-19 cases have continued to surge even as the rate of increase in cases has slowed down. The total cases, as per the government data, have shot up to nearly 30,000 with over 1,000 deaths while close to 7,800 patients have been cured. Interestingly, as per the predictions from the Data Driven Innovation Lab (DDI), Singapore University of Technology and Design, 97 per cent of Coronavirus is likely to end by May 21 and 99 per cent by May 31 next month. The rate at which Covid cases is doubling, according to the government, has slowed down from three days before the lockdown to 10 days.