Economic crisis needs collective national response

Let me take you to Firozabad. Here, there are 200 glass bangle manufacturing units employing three lakh labourers. The bangle business is worth about ₹17,000 crore. Due to the Gulf War, their exports have dried up and a decline in PNG quota is affecting their production. Due to the double whammy, the manufacturers threatened to stop production from 22 May. The district administration’s intervention has nudged them to postpone their decision till 30 May. There are thousands of such units throughout the country that are suffering or are about to be overwhelmed.

This is the reason Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked people to exercise restraint.

He wants Indians to desist from buying gold and travelling abroad for a year. Due to the Hormuz Strait blockade, the spectre of shortage in petroleum products and urea is real. Some YouTubers are peddling myths of imminent famine in India—far from the truth. Since the Covid pandemic, the Modi government is providing a monthly ration to 800 million people. We have enough food grains to continue the scheme.

The advice not to buy gold is to save foreign currency. Government data shows close to 25,000 tonnes of gold is ‘lying idle’ with the Indian citizens. Apart from this, religious institutions have huge amounts of gold, silver and other ornaments. We can utilise this dormant wealth.

In 1997, the Deve Gowda government brought a Special Import License and in 2015 the Modi government introduced the Gold Monetisation Scheme. These schemes were bitterly criticized. They can be modified and relaunched.

India’s prominent jeweller guilds, gems and ornament export processing councils have advised the government to establish a ‘bullion bank’. It will reduce the dependence on gold imports and save foreign exchange.

The economy has faced oil shocks earlier too. The only long-term solution is to reduce our dependence on oil. In 1950s, we toyed with the idea of ‘gasification of coal’. It was said that we have abundant reserves of coal and it can be converted into gas to bring down oil use. Later, there were talks of solar and biogas energy. Some work was done but that was not enough to meet the ever-growing demand. We need superhuman efforts to meet the needs.

We are told to use public transport to save fuel and energy but its condition is abysmal. City bus services are dead in almost every city in the Hindi heartland. Some big cities have metro services but they are inadequate, considering the expanse of the city.

A few days ago, one of my senior editorial colleagues was seriously injured after being hit by a vehicle while returning home. He’s forced to use a two-wheeler as there’s no credible public transport option for him in the 30-kilometre stretch between his residence and the office. This is the situation in Delhi and the National Capital Region. The situation is worse in smaller towns and in cities that mimic metros.

I laugh at the charade perpetuated by people in positions of power travelling in public transport. We should do away with such optics and start working on long-term solutions to the problems on a war footing. Remember, such conversations were initiated during Covid too, but in the heady ‘hockey stick’ recovery period we lost track. We can turn the present crisis into an opportunity where our country and the society maintains the focus and energy till the time we achieve our target.

Shashi Shekhar is editor-in-chief, Hindustan. Views are personal.