HOW SAFE IS YOUR JOB?
For 30-year-old Sasi Kumar, an Uber driver in Delhi, owning a car and earning Rs 15,000-20,000 a month was more than enough. It was more money than he had ever earned; it helped his small family of three survive. He also had the flexibility to earn more if he wanted to; more hours meant extra cash.
Life, however, came to a standstill for Kumar this March when the coronavirus pandemic overwhelmed the country. Stuck at home, his earnings abruptly halted, he has been at the mercy of the local moneylender for his expenses, of which the EMI (equated monthly instalment) of the car loan he took from an NBFC (non-banking financial company) accounts for a fat chunk. “Uber told me I’d be put on goods delivery duty, but it didn’t work. Getting (police) passes to move around is very difficult,” he says. He has got 20 kilos of wheat free from the state government, but it isn’t sufficient.
Kumar earns his livelihood in a growing segment of the Indian economy that employs millions of semi-skilled workers, such as drivers and delivery agents, who work in asset-light businesses that do not offer a social security net. He is also among the millions who have been badly hit by the lockdown the country was put under on March 25 to arrest the spread of COVID-19. Indeed, in the 35 days of the lockdown so far, health statistics reveal that the transmission of the novel coronavirus has been slow. While every death is a tragedy for the family, a country of more than 1.3 billion people has counted a relatively low 1,008 deaths as on April 29, compared to, say, 59,284 in the US. We cannot be sure of the final outcome of the Great Lockdown on the lives of the people. But what we know for sure is the havoc it has wreaked on the livelihoods of those like Kumar. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), a private research organisation, estimates that 120 million Indians have been rendered jobless in the one month of the lockdown. Of the total 406 million people employed in the country, only 20 per cent, or 81.2 million, are in the ‘salaried’ category. While the pandemic won’t spare them
