By : Satyaki Paul
The year 2020 will recorded as the dark past in our minds with horrors of the first wave of COVID19 Pandemic. To curtail such event numerous lockdown measures were imposed by various state governments. This resulted in decline of our Indian economy in a worst-ever condition since our dismal condition of 1979-80. However, there are some sectors which contradicted this trend such as agriculture, forestry and fishing which posted a positive outlook in the provisional estimates of National Statistical Office (NSO) at 3.6%.
There are two reasons which resulted in the enhanced the output of our agriculture and allied sectors. These are:
(1) Monsoon: The Monsoon season from June to September had plenty of rainfall which augmented the crop output. Furthermore, there was plentiful of post and pre-monsoon which recharged ground water table, reservoirs, etc. All these in consonance led to a bumper harvest.
(2) Specific exemptions: The agriculture and allied sectors were endowed with specific exemptions from the pan-Indian lockdown through addendums issued by Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). In this context, farmers mobilized their harvesting and planting labour during the peak lockdown period of India.
Nonetheless, they had to face some issues also such as low demand of products due to closure of hotels, eateries, etc. This led to a collapse of out of home consumption which was addressed by the central government through heavy procurement using Minimum Support Price (MSP) and direct monetary aid through schemes such as PM-KISAN. Thus, the demand situation improved with unlock phases of lockdown and recovery of global anti-commodity prices. Furthermore, industries such as Fast-Moving-Consumer-Goods (FMCG) and Cement also had high demand in the rural regions of India. These indirectly led to the increase in employment generation in the unorganized sector. The MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) also neutralized some after effects such as loss of employment borne by the migrant labours.Thereby such cash infusion among the rural masses enabled the government to create cushion for enhancing rural incomes during COVID19 crisis. In turn, on a positive note, the rural consumption provided a support to the urban economy and hitherto preventing things to become worsened. The author works as a Ph.D. Research Scholar at the Department of Anthropology, University of Calcutta, and the co-author of the book Anthropology For All (2021).