SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024
People are falling like ripe corn ravaged by the relentless and cruel sickle. Mad, merciless. Today’s mankind is facing the arrows of the plague, like the Greeks did during the plague of Athens or the British during the Bubonic plague.
In the world and in India, people will fall, and this is not a cruel and insensitive foreboding but a grim acceptance of reality, and yet people will fight. This might take many months to over a year or even more. Who knows? 2020 will go down as mankind’s annus mirabilis (miraculous year), or wonder year. And perhaps like Isaac Newton who was sent back from Cambridge due to the plague, to his family estate in Woolsthorpe Manor, where he made some of his best discoveries in isolation, we will have a vaccine against Coronavirus or more, making it the annus mirabilis of a group of scientists and their nation. But can we count on it? Hell, no.
But as this great churn goes on, people still have to earn and live, in that order. There will be people who live and those who don’t. But in order to make this ratio bearable, the former has to outweigh the latter. While social distancing can flatten the curve of the disease and death, as we go along, it is the economic hugging of small businesses, the unorganised sector, and customer and tourist-driven businesses that will put money in the hands of many. This is needed to grow, produce and sell, keeping the wheels of the economy alive. In simple terms, without quite attempting a seminal paper aimed at the Nobel, a realisation that much after the epidemic ceases and life starts getting towards normal, the economic impact of this massive blow will be felt in our societies, will go a long way. And Goa really is no exception.
Indeed, governments are reeling, health systems are reeling and the battle is to have a testing infrastructure in place, do tests, treat and manage infections and save as many lives. But managing a system and suffering body blows each minute, will need the economic strength to survive. For producers and manufacturers, for the salaried, for small establishments and businesses, the priority has to be to put money in their hands. At the same time midcap businesses, Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSMEs) need support, from banks and the government to stay afloat.
The Goa government needs to understand this and earmark relief and funds, in the same manner in which it handles natural calamities and disasters, or even terror attacks. As the swathe of the epidemic drowns economies, one is not completely sure if the government is keen to work with non-government businesses to handhold them through the crisis.
The theory of social distancing may work towards flattening the curve of Coronavirus cases. But social distancing from drivers of economy - businesses, factories, units, will lead to an economic and social collapse, with people left with no spending power, no savings in the bank, staring into the abyss of hopelessness. If someone ever planned this epidemic, the brand playbook will have economic death as the ultimate fallout of the project.
The victims of the Coronavirus lockdown are those whose work and own businesses, and they are related to and dependent on those who travel. A season which has seen restaurants making do with five or ten covers daily before the Corona hit, now open their places out of habit and hope, the latter dying slowly with each sunset. Tragically there is no construct of the restaurant, shack and pub owners and nightlife stakeholders expecting a bailout or survival package from the government, haven’t got any assurances because they are perceived as businessmen who have spending power, unlike, for instance, a “mining dependent”, who was either employed or provided services that kept the wheels of the mining industry moving. And as mining closed, the mining dependent backed totally by mine owners, moved into an overdrive to get their loans waived off, repayment delayed or loans restructured. In February 2018, when the second renewal of mining leases was quashed by the Supreme Court, then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar has said that the “government will ensure no one employed in the mining industry is left jobless”
In any case, over 3000 truck owners and almost 200 mining workers have been protected by the Umbrella scheme, each getting a benefit of about Rs 12,000 a month.
While the promise that no one in the Mining Industry will be left jobless has not been met, the mining dependents have had the government’s ear, much more than those generating revenues, and paying sales, excise and commercial taxes from the entertainment industry.
As calls to shutdown pubs/bars, and with restaurants forced to shut shop, those who run the main support system on which tourism runs, are literally devoid of support. Without taking anything away from mining “dependents” let us not live in denial that some of the main business enterprise owners of the mining sectors continue to buy Mercedes Cars and Harley Davidson bikes, and yet, are a part of the ecosystem which is fighting for financial assistance to the mining “dependent”, which, and this is important including themselves.
While there are big daddies in the restaurant club, pub sector too, a drive through Baga, Calangute, Anjuna and Vagator will be sadness personified with miles and miles of restaurants with no souls. Lifelessness greets you. Those who work in the restaurants are desperate.
In the UK, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of Indian origin, Rishi Sunak underlined the need for government to do “what it takes” to help small businesses. He announced the availability of banking loans with the State as guarantee, immediate cash grants of 3000 pounds for immediate expenses and a larger availability of 25,000 pounds for larger expenses, for pubs restaurants and other businesses. More than the money, it’s the government’s way of saying, we are with you.
The Goa government should have had the sagacity to open a dialogue with those who run restaurants and manage other aspects of Goa’s tourism support. The government has very little direct role to play in shaping the contours of Goa’s prized tourism assets, its restaurants, pubs, and clubs. But can the government, or allied stakeholders like hotels, taxis, rented cars, motorcycle pilots exist if tourists in Goa don’t eat out, travel or party?
These small businesses give locals as well as tourists a sense of belonging. Everyone knows each other by name. When the Coronavirus restrictions are lifted and we emerge from our homes, would we want to see our mom and pop shops, our little café near home, or the small restaurant shut because the owners can’t afford rents or salaries? With even big nightclubs with huge turnovers sending staff permanently home, it is important that small businesses continue to be in the embrace of those who matter.
The clouds of doom linger and get darker, all we can cling to, even as we social distance, is support. In these times governments need to get not just human, but humane. If humanity mutates and presents different positive virtue each different from the other, yet precious, it shall beat the deadly mutation of the Coronavirus does. We may just manage to turn the corner and inch towards a miracle.
