Amid a sharply rising Covid curve, with migrant employees beginning to crowd railway stations and bus terminals in scenes paying homage to the times following final yr’s nationwide lockdown, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has reached out to business associations and leaders of India Inc to reassure them that the federal government has no plan to impose one other such lockdown, and can as an alternative deal with creating small containment zones.
Sitharaman additionally conveyed to them that PM Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah had been in contact with states, and had been monitoring the scenario concerning availability of oxygen, important medicines and medical amenities.
A senior official with one of many business associations advised The Indian Express that the Minister’s Sunday name was geared toward calming the nerves of employees employed with small and massive manufacturing models and to reassure them that the federal government had no plans to droop public transport.
“The finance minister called and said that there is no plan of a nationwide lockdown and that the focus would be on creating small containment zones to stop the spread,” the official stated.
Besides calling the business associations and India Inc leaders, Sitharaman can be learnt to have sought inputs from the business to deal with their issues.
With Covid circumstances having risen sharply over the past couple of weeks, Maharashtra introduced a janta curfew final week and a number of other different states, together with Delhi, introduced weekend lockdowns.
Last yr, after the federal government introduced an entire lockdown in a bid to include the rising Covid circumstances throughout the nation, many migrant employees had been left stranded and had no possibility however to hit the street with their households.
This time spherical, the Centre has been emphasising that it doesn’t see an entire, nationwide lockdown as the way in which ahead.
On Tuesday, Sitharaman had stated, “Even with the second wave, we are very clear that we are not going in for lockdowns in a big way. We don’t want to totally arrest the economy.”
