In­dia is tee­ter­ing at the brink of a cri­sis un­par­al­leled in its over 70 years of his­tory as a re­pub­lic. The Covid19 pan­demic has thor­oughly ex­posed the health sys­tems in the coun­try, in ur­ban and rural ar­eas. WHO warn­ing has come true, ‘Don’t de­pend upon any­one, each one has to save one­self.’ The cri­sis along the LAC with China is worst since 1962. In­dia is see­ing its worst eco­nomic de­cline since 1996 when it started re­port­ing quar­terly num­bers of GDP.

COVID19 PAN­DEMIC AP­PEARS TO HAVE BE­LIED THE AT­TEMPTS AT be­lit­tling it by me­dia and the pol­icy for­mu­la­tors. On 5 Sep­tem­ber 2020, In­dia crossed 41 lakhs con­firmed cases. On 6 Sep­tem­ber 2020, it crossed 42 lakh con­firmed cases.

Even though the USA will con­tinue to be the coun­try with the largest num­ber of con­firmed cases; In­dia has emerged as the global hotspot of the pan­demic; with the num­ber of daily in­creases of pos­i­tive cases be­ing al­most thrice that of the United States of Amer­ica. The num­ber of daily covid19 re­lated deaths are at par with that of the USA.

The de­cline of the econ­omy con­tin­ues to be pre­cip­i­tous. In the last quar­ter, GDP shrank by 23.9%. That is the worst de­cline among all the ma­jor world economies that have an­nounced GDP fig­ures for the quar­ter, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est tally from the Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Eco­nomic Co­op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment. It is also In­di­a’s worst de­cline since 1996 when it started re­port­ing quar­terly num­bers.

DOES THIS GIVE YOU A SINK­ING FEEL­ING? In­dia has emerged as the global hotspot of the pan­demic; with the num­ber of daily in­creases of pos­i­tive cases be­ing al­most thrice that of the United States of Amer­ica. The num­ber of daily covid19 re­lated deaths are at par with that of the USA.

The fast-ap­proach­ing rum­ble of war drums can be heard both at the LOC with Pak­istan and the LAC with China. The Gov­ern­ment of In­dia ap­pears to have mis­man­aged the tri­an­gu­lar con­test in­volv­ing In­dia-Pak­istan-China.

Ten­sions along the LAC in Lad­hak has been in the me­dia spot­light, in spite of the over the top cov­er­age of cir­cum­stances of Sushant Singh Ra­jput’s death. How­ever, since late 2019 dailies from north­east­ern states have been re­port­ing sim­i­lar wor­ry­ing de­vel­op­ments from Arunachal.

With the Indo-Naga ac­cord seem­ingly hit­ting a road­block in these pre­cip­i­tous times, a se­ri­ous tu­mult in the al­ready frag­ile polity of the north­east­ern is in­ex­orably emerg­ing as a pos­si­bil­ity.

It is a mat­ter of re­gret that the light at the end of the tun­nel is too dis­tant to pro­vide suc­cour and hope.

The com­bined ef­fect of all this will be neg­a­tive for the pro­fes­sional classes and the poor. It is a mat­ter of re­gret that the light at the end of the tun­nel is too dis­tant to pro­vide suc­cour and hope.

Car­toon Cour­tesy: Hedg­eye

Ku­mar San­jay Singh is As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor in the De­part­ment of His­tory at the Swami Shrad­dhanand Col­lege, Uni­ver­sity of Delhi with spe­cial­i­sa­tion in Mu­ta­tions in In­dian State for­ma­tion post-1947, Ex­tra­or­di­nary laws es­pe­cially In­ter­nal Se­cu­rity Leg­is­la­tions and Hu­man Rights with spe­cial fo­cus on North-east In­dia and Adi­vasi so­ci­ety.