Jeffrey Gettleman
SURAT: The blow India’s dreams have received from the coronavirus pandemic is on the smothered streets of the Surat Industrial Zone.
It can be seen in textile factories that took generations to build and are now spraying, consuming about a tenth of what they used to do.
It is seen on the thin faces of families who sewed the finishing touches to the saris but, with so little work, now vegetables and milk.
It can be seen in empty hairdressers and cell phone stores, which shoppers have abandoned while their scarce savings are reduced.
Ashish Gujarati, head of a textile arrangement at this mall on India’s west coast, stood in front of an abandoned factory with a look of surprise on his face and showed the road.
“See that chimney?” Asked. Smoke used to come out of him. “
Not so long ago, India’s long term was completely different: it boasted of a booming economy that brought millions of people out of poverty, built fashionable megacities, and amassed a great power of geopolitical fire. its wretchedly old army and a regional political and economic superpower that may one day compete with China, Asia’s greatest success.
But the economic devastation in Surat and the country is jeopardizing many of India’s aspirations. India’s economy has contracted faster than any other primary nation. Up to two hundred million others can fall back into poverty, according to some estimates. The bustling streets are empty, with others too fearful of the epidemic to venture away.
Much of the damage caused by the coronavirus blockade imposed through Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who expertly was too strict and too porous, either damaging the economy and spreading the Indian virus is now experiencing the fastest-developing coronavirus crisis, with more than 80,000 new infections reported every day.
A feeling of unrest invades the nation. Its economic expansion slows even before the pandemic. Social divisions are growing. Anti-Muslim sentiments are on the rise, partly due to a malicious crusade on social media that falsely accused Muslims of spreading the virus. China is increasingly muscular in Indian territory.
Researchers use many of the same words in India today: lost, indifferent, wounded, rudderless, unfair.
“The engine broke,” said Arundhati Roy, one of India’s most prominent writers. “The ability to shatter. And the pieces are all in the air. You don’t know where they’re going to fall or how they’re going to go. “fall. “
In a recent episode of his weekly radio show, Modi stated that India was “fighting on many fronts. “He suggested to the Indians at their social distance, wear a mask and remain “warm and warm. “
India still has assets. It has a massive, young workforce and many tech geniuses, representing an option imaginable for China at a time when the United States and much of the rest of the world are moving away from Beijing.
But his stature in the world is diminishing. In the last quarter, India’s economy fell by 24%, while China’s economy grew again. Economists say India is in danger of wasting its position as the fifth largest economy in the world, the United States, China, Japan, and Germany.
“This is the worst-case scenario India has been in since independence,” said Jayati Ghosh, a progressive economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “People don’t have money. Investors will not invest if there is no market. And the prices are gone, for the maximum of production. »
Many neighborhoods in the capital of New Delhi, where the underpaid staff lived, are deserted, shell-shaped, a hot wind blows through empty huts with tin walls. A few years ago, as the economy grew at a rate of 9%, it was difficult to locate an accommodation to rent.
When Modi came here to force a tide of Hindu nationalism in 2014, many Indians felt that their country had nevertheless discovered the leader hard to live up to his aspirations.
But Modi has focused his energies on divisive ideological projects, such as a new citizenship law that discriminates against Muslims or strengthens government control over the predominantly Muslim region of Kashmir.
From quarter to quarter, India’s economic expansion rate has dropped from 8% in 2016 to 4% just before the pandemic. The 4% would be respectable for an evolved country like the United States. But in India, this point falls short of the millions. of other young people who enter the job market every year, eager for their first job.
Many of the judicial cases investors bring about India (heavy land policies, restrictive hard labor laws, bureaucracy) predating Modi, but their confidence and absolutism, the same qualities that attracted many voters, could have added to the problems.
Four years ago, it eliminated nearly 90% of India’s paper cash to fight corruption and inspire virtual payments. While economists applauded any of the goals, they say that the way Modi introduced the initiative in India has caused lasting damage to the economy.
This impulsivity reappeared when he hit the coronavirus. On March 24, at 8 p. m. , after ordering all Indians to go in, Modi shut down the economy (offices, factories, roads, trains, interstate borders, almost everything) 4 hours in advance.
Tens of millions of Indians lost their jobs instantly. Many worked in factories or in structure sites or in urban homes, they were immigrants from rural India.
Fearing hunger in urban slums, millions of people have left urban centres for walking, biking or hitchhiking desperately back to their villages, an epic opposite migration from the city to the countryside that India had never seen and that has caused the coronavirus in each and every one of them. corner of this country of 1. 3 billion other people.
Now, back, many economists are tracking the root of India’s intertwined crises – spiraling infections and a devastated economy – so far.
“India’s shameful slowdown this quarter of 2020 is almost entirely due to the nature of the blockade,” said Kaushik Basu, a former World Bank economist and now a professor at Cornell. “Maybe I’ll value whether to stop the pandemic. ” He didn’t. “
He called the “blockage and dispersion” and said Modi’s policies had been a “failure. “
Some staff members have returned to the cities. But the structure and production industries have been marked because many migrant employees remain so traumatized that they never need to return.
“We were hungry for days,” said Mohammad Chand, who once worked in a clothing factory near Delhi but fled to his ancestral village many miles away. “I had to move from one position to another after being evicted through the Owner Even the parents who show up at the door.
“I don’t need to be on this stage anymore,” he said.
At the Surat textile market, Jagdish Goyal sat frowning in his abandoned tent in piles of bluish green and orange women’s suits, in front of the poor running, now stacked to the ceiling.
“Nobody buys, ” he says, for what? Because there are no social functions, no weddings to dress. There’s no position to pass. No birthday parties People are afraid to pass out.
Fear of contracting the virus turns out to be a decisive factor in India’s economic crisis, which goes beyond confinement: shopping poses a risk of illness at a time when patients are rejected in the hospital.
According to a recent Google Mobility Report, which tracks cell phone data, commercial and recreational spaces have declined by 39% compared to before the pandemic. In Brazil and the United States, the only countries with the highest number of coronavirus infections were part of the number of coronavirus infections.
Modi’s approval government has provided emergency relief of about $260 billion, but economists have said very few pass on to the poor. Tax revenues have fallen, some states cannot pay fitness personnel, and public debt is reaching its point in 40 years.
However, Modi’s popularity continues to grow. A recent vote published in India Today, a leading news magazine, showed its approval score at 78%, in five years.
This is partly due to the collapse of competition. India’s largest opposition party, the National Congress, has suffered desertations, stabbings and an endless existential crisis over who deserves to lead it. And Modi’s adherence to Hindu nationalism plays well within the Hindu majority, about four-fifths of the population. “His coverage of Hindu values is a great explanation for why I do him,” said Goyal, the women’s costume trader. “If our self-esteem is not alive, what is the economy for?”
Some sectors of the economy are doing well. Agriculture has been driven by heavy monsoon rains. In some cities, such as New Delhi, many companies are open again, they may have new symptoms at the gates that say “There are no more than 3 people inside” or “40% fixed discount !”
But the virus and the economy are closely linked, and india’s virus graph is a stable ladder that is rising. India is also number 3 in terms of deaths from the virus, its mortality rate per capita is much lower.
Anxiety hangs in the humid air of the Surat Textile Zone.
“No one comes to shave anymore,” laments Akshay Sen, a hairdresser with some coins in his pocket.
His words echoed in the closed tents. Behind him, a men’s organization was around a tea stall buying tea.
Behind it all, as a sign of caution on the horizon, was a large smoke-free brick fireplace.