The Coronavirus or Covid pandemic wrecked havoc in the lives of a large number of people, societies, nations alike. Moreso, the economies of countries got affected drastically at the onslaught. The Indian economy was growing at a rate of 3% - 4% before the advent of the pandemic say, March-April 2020. Moreover in the year 2019 the economy was growing at the rate of 6% ,5% annually. The first lockdown in India was announced in March 2020. All schools, colleges, markets, shopping malls, hotels/restaurants, parks, public and private functions/events were banned. Industries, factories ,construction activities etc. came to a halt. However online services like Work From Home(WFH) ,online shopping ,meetings via video conferencing were the order of the day. But a large chunk of the population were left jobless with little or no earning. The economic growth thus got slowed down. The profitabilities of companies – both government and private decreased, income from tax, incomes of employees, workers and daily wage earners too slumped. Covid-related expenditures both public and private inflated. Purchase of medicines, disinfectants, vaccines, drugs etc. cost the exchequer dearly. The economic growth rate moved to as low as almost -24% in the first quarter i.e. April-June 2020 of the Financial Year(FY) 2020-2021, followed by -7.5% in the next quarter i.e. July-September 2020. Thus the annual growth rate of FY 21 i.e. April 2020 - March 2021 was -7.3%. Likewise a second Covid wave stuck the country by around March- April 2021. Although nationwide lockdown was not announced this time, partial to complete lockdown was imposed in most of the states. The second wave infected more number of people and more died than the last. The economy too is likely to contract, this time may be more.The last contraction was termed as a Technical recession. Although Covid infections and deaths have started receding since May 21 still some states have increased lockdowns. The Central government announced economic stimulus package worth 20L crores last time which would provide some resilience to a faltering economy. Moreover moratorium on EMI for six months, financial packages, cash-in-hand schemes in some states and reduction in IGST etc. on purchase of medical equipments would help the economy a lot better. Yet historic unemployment rates 14%, insecurities of sources of income/revenue and frequent lockdowns would be a dampner to the growth of the economy. The way forward would be to contain and fully get rid of Covid infections and the pandemic and putting the economy back on rails on a firm footing to achieve reasonable growth rates.
