SURAT, India – The shock India’s dreams have received from the coronavirus pandemic can be found on the quiet streets of the Surat industrial zone.
You can see it in textile factories that took generations to build, but are now running low and using up about a tenth of the fabric they used to make.
It can be seen in the slim faces of families who used to sew the finishing touches to saris but, with so little business, are now cutting back on vegetables and milk.
You can see it in empty barber shops and cell phone stores, which shoppers have abandoned as their meager savings come to nothing.
Ashish Gujarati, the director of a textile association in this shopping center on the west coast of India, stood in front of an abandoned factory with a shocked expression on his face and pointed to the road.
“Do you see that fireplace?” I ask. “Smoke used to come out of it.”
Not long ago, the future of India looked completely different. It boasted of a burning economy that was lifting millions out of poverty, building modern megacities, and amassing great geopolitical power. His goal was to give his people a middle-class lifestyle, upgrade his woefully old military, and become a regional political and economic superpower that could one day rival China, Asia’s greatest success story.
But the economic devastation in Surat and across the country is putting many of India’s aspirations at risk. The Indian economy has contracted faster than any other major nation. Up to 200 million people could slip back into poverty, according to some estimates. Many of its normally vibrant streets are empty, and people are too scared by the outbreak to venture far.
Much of this damage was caused by the coronavirus lockdown imposed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which experts now say was both too narrow and too porous, hurting the economy and spreading the virus. India now has the fastest growing coronavirus crisis, with more than 80,000 new infections reported every day.
A sense of unease is gripping the nation. Its economic growth was slowing even before the pandemic. Social divisions are widening. Anti-Muslim sentiments are on the rise, in part due to a malicious campaign on social media that falsely blamed Muslims for spreading the virus. China is increasingly entering Indian territory.
Scholars use many of the same words when they contemplate India today: Lost. Apathetic. Injured. Without rudder. Unfair.
“The engine has broken,” said Arundhati Roy, one of India’s most prominent writers. “The ability to survive has been destroyed. And the pieces are all in the air. You don’t know where they are going to fall or how they are going to fall. ”
On a recent episode of his weekly radio show, Modi acknowledged that India was “fighting on many fronts.” She urged indigenous people to maintain social distancing, wear masks and stay “healthy and wholesome.”
India still has strong points. It has a huge, young workforce and loads of tech geniuses. It represents a possible alternative to China at a time when the United States and much of the rest of the world are realigning away from Beijing.
But his stature in the world is diminishing. Last quarter, the Indian economy contracted 24%, while China is growing again. Economists say India is at risk of losing its place as the world’s fifth-largest economy, behind the United States, China, Japan and Germany.
“This is probably the worst situation India has found itself in since independence,” said Jayati Ghosh, a development economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “People don’t have money. Investors will not invest if there is no market. And the costs have increased for most of the production. ”
Many neighborhoods in the capital New Delhi, where low-paid workers used to live, are deserted, like shells, a hot wind blowing through empty tin-walled shacks. A few years ago, when the economy was expanding at a 9% rate, it was difficult to find a place to rent.
Quarter by quarter, India’s economic growth rate has been falling, from 8% in 2016 to 4% just before the pandemic. Four percent would be respectable for a developed country like the United States. But in India, that level is no match for the millions of young people who enter the workforce each year, hungry for their first job.
Many of the complaints investors make about India – cumbersome land policies, restrictive labor laws, bureaucracy – predate Modi. But his confidence and absolutism, the same qualities that attracted many voters, may have compounded the problems.
Four years ago, it suddenly removed nearly 90% of India’s paper money to crack down on corruption and encourage digital payments. While economists applauded both goals, they say the way Modi fueled this move in India caused lasting damage to the economy.
That impulsiveness resurfaced when the coronavirus hit. On March 24, at 8 p.m., after ordering all the Indians to stay home, Modi shut down the economy (offices, factories, roads, trains, state borders, just about everything) four hours early.
Tens of millions of Indians lost their jobs instantly. Many worked in factories or on construction sites or in urban homes, but they were immigrants from rural India.
Fearing starvation in the city’s slums, millions left the urban centers and walked, biked, or made desperate trips back to their villages – an epic reverse migration from city to country that India had never seen. That dragged the coronavirus to every corner of this country of 1.3 billion people.
Now looking back, many economists trace the root of India’s intertwined crises – spiraling infections and a devastated economy – to this point.
“India’s embarrassing slowdown in the second quarter of 2020 is almost entirely due to the nature of the lockdown,” said Kaushik Basu, a former World Bank chief economist and now a professor at Cornell. “This may have been worth it if it stopped the pandemic. It did not.”
He called the approach “blockade and dispersal” and said Modi’s policies had been a “failure.”
Some workers have returned to the cities. But the construction and manufacturing industries have contracted dramatically because many migrant workers remain so traumatized that they never want to return.
“We starved for days,” said Mohammad Chand, who once worked in a garment factory near Delhi but fled to his ancestral village, hundreds of kilometers away. “I had to stray from one place to another after the owner kicked me out. Even the family members started showing us the door. ”
“I don’t want to be in that situation again,” he said.
At the Surat textile market, Jagdish Goyal sat scowling in his abandoned shop with piles of teal and orange women’s suits, priced for the working poor, now stacked to the ceiling.
“No one is buying,” he said. “Why? Because there are no social functions. There are no weddings to dress up for. There are no places to go. There are no big birthday parties. People are afraid to go out.”
Fear of contracting the virus appears to be a decisive factor in India’s economic crisis, which extends beyond the lockdown. Going out shopping means risking illness at a time when sick people are sometimes turned away from hospitals.
According to a recent Google Mobility Report, which tracks cell phone data, travel to recreational and commercial areas is down 39% compared to before the pandemic. In Brazil and the US, the only countries with the most coronavirus infections, the drops were less than half as severe.
The Modi government has provided some emergency aid, about $ 260 billion, but economists said very little flowed to the poor. Tax revenues have plummeted, some states are unable to pay healthcare workers, and government debt is approaching its highest level in 40 years.
Still, Modi’s popularity continues to rise. A recent poll published in India Today, one of the leading news magazines, showed its approval rating at 78%, the highest in five years.
Part of this can be explained by the collapse of competition. The largest opposition party, the National Congress of India, has been plagued by defections, backstabbing and a never-ending existential crisis over who should lead it. And Modi’s adoption of Hindu nationalism plays well within the Hindu majority, about four-fifths of the population. “His protection of Hindu values is a big reason why I support him,” said Goyal, the seller of women’s suits. “If our self-esteem is not alive, what good is the economy?”
Some parts of the economy are doing well. Agriculture has benefited from heavy monsoon rains. In some cities, like New Delhi, many businesses are open again, although they may have new signs on the doors that say “No more than 3 people inside” or “40% fixed discount!”
But the virus and the economy are intertwined, and India’s virus chart is a steady ladder, going up. India also ranks third in virus deaths, although its per capita death rate is much lower.
Anxiety hangs in the humid air of the Surat textile zone.
“No one comes to shave anymore,” lamented Akshay Sen, a young barber with a few coins in his pocket.
His words echoed through the closed shops. Behind him was a group of men circling a tea stall, but not buying tea.
Behind all that, like a warning sign on the horizon, was another tall, smokeless brick chimney.
(The report was contributed by Shalini Venugopal Bhagat, Sameer Yasir, Kai Schultz, Suhasini Raj and Hari Kumar)
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