A year of challenges, 2020 draws to a close

The year 2020 was one that was expected to mark a positive change for India. Several years ago, APJ Abdul Kalam and YS Rajan had written a book, India 2020: A Vision For The New Millennium, encapsulating their ideas for a developed India.

However, 2020 proved to be the worst year for most Indians alive, as they hadn’t seen as devastating a year in their lifetime.

The year saw a pandemic that hit more than 10-million Indians and claimed almost a lakh-and-a-half lives. Beginning from China, the coronavirus hit 82-million people globally and killed 1.8-million. The pandemic rages on as 2020 comes to a close, albeit with vaccines being developed and ready to be administered.

Developed nations bore the brunt of the pandemic, with the United States seeing 20-million people testing positive and 3.5-lakh people losing their lives.

The pandemic exposed the public health systems of most nations and changed the habits of people; making face masks ubiquitous as people tried to avoid exposure to the highly infectious virus that can spread through communication with an infected person and even touch.

Recession

As countries went into lockdowns to prevent the pandemic from devastating their populations, the world economy suffered, with many countries going into recession.

India, on its part, was the worst affected among major economies, recording its first-ever recession – a contraction of the economy over two consecutive quarters – since independence.

The Indian experience of a sudden lockdown towards the end of March 2020, was particularly punishing. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an abrupt national lockdown – shutting down not just the red zones but also green zones – with a mere four-hour notice.

 The government had hoped that the 21-day lockdown would stop the pandemic in its tracks. This did not happen. On the contrary, this meant there was no work for migrant workers, whose employers tried to save money and not pay their dues. No transfer of money took place in the Jan Dhan accounts of the poor with the announcement of lockdown. The result: the country witnessed heartrending scenes of labourers walking thousands of kilometres with their belongings and children in a bid to get home. Some died on the way. However, there were stories of courage amid administrative paralysis: a girl cycled from Gurugram in Haryana to Darbhanga in Bihar, with her sick father riding pillion on the bicycle.

The lockdown brought the Indian economy to a grinding halt even as the pandemic continued to rage on. The government, however, sought to justify its decision saying that things would have been much worse and many more people would have fallen ill or died if a total lockdown had not been enforced.

The economic figures came as a shock. The Indian economy contracted by 23.9-per cent in the first quarter of 2020 coinciding with the lockdown. In the second quarter, too, the GDP contracted by 7.5-per cent. Data by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed unemployment levels at almost 7-per cent in October 2020. It estimated that over 6.6-million, white-collar, professional jobs were lost between May and August 2020. In April, over 121-million salaried jobs were lost amid the lockdown, followed by some recovery as unlock happened.

There is little doubt that the Indian economy will be out of recession in 2021, but the recovery will be partially a statistical mirage, as the low base of 2020 would suggest an artificial rebound when seen year-on-year.

The government did announce a Rs. 20-lakh crore -- or 10-per cent of the GDP -- stimulus package to boost demand in the wake of the coronavirus disruption in the economy, but an RTI reply revealed that barely 10-per cent of this was disbursed.

Year of protests

The medical emergency apart, the beginning and the end of 2020 were rocked by protests against government policies. The year began with the anti-CAA protests in full swing, with Shaheen Bagh in Delhi as the nerve centre. Protesters, largely belonging to the Muslim community, said that CAA, which proposed to expedite grant of citizenship to non-Muslim illegal immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, was violative of Article 14 of the constitution, as the religious discrimination it introduced in the law was not based on any reasonable classification.

The government said it was helping persecuted minorities, but had no answer as to why Myanmar – where the Rohingya Muslims were persecuted – and Sri Lanka, where Tamils have faced persecution, were not included in the list of neighbouring countries covered in the law.   

The national capital was hit by riots in early 2020. BJP leaders in Delhi were accused of making hate speeches and the Delhi Police was accused of booking people known to be critics of the government while taking no action against ruling party members who were captured on camera making provocative speeches.

The last month of 2020 has been witness to farm protests on the borders of Delhi, as farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western UP, rose in opposition to a clutch of laws permitting contract farming and marketing of agricultural produce outside the government-regulated APMC system. Farmers from these regions -- where the APMC system works very well and government purchase of wheat, paddy and cotton takes place quite well at the government-determined Minimum Support Price -- fear that liberalisation of agricultural produce marketing may in the long-run make the APMC system fall into disuse and make companies dictate terms. There have been demands for either repealing the laws or amending them to prohibit transactions below the MSP.

These farm protests also led to identity issues being raked up, with supporters of the government labelling Sikh protesters as supporters of Khalistan, bringing forth the worrisome prospect of another minority feeling alienated.

Politically, even as the BJP maintained its electoral dream run in Bihar, the NDA lost an ally in the Shiromani Akali Dal. The BJP’s terms with former ally Shiv Sena took a turn for the worse.

The year also saw reports of Chinese incursions on territories in Ladakh claimed by India. Unlike the aggressive posturing against Pakistan after the Pulwama terror attack early in 2019, the response of the Centre was much more guarded this time.

Identity politics pervaded the year, from othering Muslims during the anti-CAA agitation and labelling them as super-spreaders of the pandemic in its early days to questioning the patriotism of Sikh farmers, who have traditionally been over-represented in the Indian armed forces.

On balance, 2020 was a year of multiple challenges for India and the world. It remains to be seen whether 2021 can usher in a new era of hope.