With the Rabi harvest to reach its peak this month, allowing the
free flow of labour and transport to enable sale of produce is a big step that
has been taken.
The much-expected
guidelines for the partial lifting of limited economic
activity announced by the government are pragmatic and would be in force
post April 20. It is good that the government has opened the doors towards
working on an exit route and has included the most essential activity,
agriculture to operate freely. With the Rabi harvest to reach its peak this
month, allowing the free flow of labour and transport to enable sale of produce
is a big step that has been taken.
While agriculture
can be justified, allowing other activity like construction in rural areas or
IT related activity along with certain conditions being imposed can be
interpreted as an experiment to see how it plays out. The spread of the virus
is still quite prodigious in our country and one can still not be sure if the
number of new cases has peaked out or whether it is going to be higher. This
being the case, any relaxation has to be calibrated, which is the approach
taken. Given the data on the spread of the pandemic it does appear that the
higher cases have emanated in states and districts where there have been more
testing which can also mean that regions with nil cases could be because of the
absence of testing. Therefore, it needs to be seen how this works out.
But the message
for India Inc is clear. Companies need to be prepared for the lockdown
to end and should have their internal strategies in place. The services such as
aviation, hotels, malls, etc. would have to wait for a much longer time as they
involve direct interaction of people which will be the last set of activities
to be relaxed. All these come under public spaces which will be the lowest
priority in any phased withdrawal plan of the government. The others need to
plan on how to go about their business as the new normal comes in maybe after a
gap of three months. The pressing issues will be to plan their production
levels which will determine the requirement of labour. This will necessarily
mean that those industries which are B2B would have to evaluate how other
businesses are placed to come up with their strategies. Next, the challenge is
to re-assemble the workforce especially if it includes causal labour which had
moved back to their home towns. This will have issues relating to restoration
of transport especially buses and trains as it would be difficult otherwise for
any reverse migration to take place.
