$4 a Day Indian Worker Worries: If Virus Won’t Kill Me, Hunger Will

Chandrakant Thakur ekes out a living by zooming around Mumbai on his beaten up scooter dodging pedestrians, street dwellers, cars and sometimes cows to deliver meals. Now, with the streets eerily empty amid the city’s virus lockdown, he faces a stark choice: stay and survive on half his regular pay or return to his family in the state of Bihar. While his income from delivering dishes like chicken curry and fried rice has been as low as 300 rupees ($4) a day recently -- barely enough to survive on -- he’s going to stick it out for now in the nation’s financial capital as the outlook in his home province is even grimmer. Hundreds of thousands of them decided to leave for their homes before the lockdown kicked in on March 25, sparking an exodus that many are making by foot back to their villages -- a scene reminiscent of the days immediately after India’s independence in 1947. In a bid to cushion the blow, the government has announced cash support for informal sector workers and Modi has even made a rare apology for the hardships they face. While slower growth means economic hardships and joblessness in developed nations, that scale of slowdown in India is set to see millions suffer in poverty, struggling to even feed their families. Some analysts are already calling for India’s government to loosen the budget, with Fitch Solutions seeing the shortfall widening to 6.8% of gross domestic product from the current 3.5% aim for the fiscal year which just started on April 1. Unlike countries with vast savings pools like China and Japan or the U.S. and Europe which print currencies that others are happy to invest in, India must offer enough return on its debt to lure international buyers who can fund those deficits. Service-driven industries from airlines to hotels to entertainment centers bore the brunt immediately, while the blanket social distancing order soon meant manufacturers had to suspend operations. Such disruptions are also bound to mean more pain for India’s creaking banking system, which is already saddled with the highest stressed-asset ratios in the world -- one of the reasons for a slowdown in lending that’s been a brake on investment.