Out-of-income middle class scraping the barrel to pay Covid bills
The glorified middle class which elevated itself following the economic reforms of the 1990s, appears to have taken a hit for the worst due to the second wave of Covid-19.
Last November, 26-year-old Akash Malik, an engineer in an IT company in Gurugram, was among several employees who lost their jobs as the firm was not able to make enough revenue. He has been jobless since then. When the second wave of Covid-19 hit the country, Akash’s father contracted the disease and turned critical. After desperate search for hospital with beds, he found one in...
Last November, 26-year-old Akash Malik, an engineer in an IT company in Gurugram, was among several employees who lost their jobs as the firm was not able to make enough revenue. He has been jobless since then.
When the second wave of Covid-19 hit the country, Akash’s father contracted the disease and turned critical. After desperate search for hospital with beds, he found one in Gurugram.
He was told to deposit ₹2 lakhs initially. He deposited the money from the family savings and his provident fund. After four days, the hospital started charging ₹35,000 for medicines. Akash and his family put all their savings and money into the treatment of his father. In the next six days, they spent nearly ₹3 lakhs. But on the 10th day, they were informed that his father had expired.
“We put everything in our father’s operation hoping that he would be fine but even after doing every possible thing, we couldn’t save him. It is heartbreaking,” Akash tells The Federal.
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When Rekha Srivastav’s (35) husband contracted Covid-19, and his oxygen level came down to 90, he started feeling dizzy. Rekha with her two children—an 8-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son—started looking for a bed in hospitals and managed one at a private hospital in Delhi after two days.
The hospital, like in the case of Akash, asked her to deposit ₹1 lakh on the first day and ₹50,000 on the next day. However, her husband’s condition deteriorated by then and he needed a ventilator, which the hospital did not have and she was unable to find.
On the third day, she was informed that her husband died.
Rekha’s ordeal did not end there. She then had to take her husband’s body for cremation and last rites as per Covid-19 protocol. From transporting the body to finding a spot at the cremation site and getting a priest and doing the last rites, she had to run from pillar to post and ended up spending around ₹35,000.
“I kept roaming around with my children for beds. We got a bed but not a ventilator. I asked money from relatives for the operation but I could not save my husband. To cremate my husband, I had to sell my ornaments,” Rekha laments. “This was all wrong and God will take revenge from all those using the pandemic as an opportunity.”
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Loans for saving lives
Deepak Sishotiya, a farmer in Poli village in the Jhajjar district of Haryana, earned ₹80,000 from his wheat harvest in April.
Towards the end of the month, Deepak’s father contracted Covid-19, and like others, he ran around in search of beds in Jhajjar, Rohtak and Gurugram districts. On failing to find one, a relative suggested that he try in Ludhiana district of Punjab.
He booked an ambulance to Ludhiana for ₹1.5 lakh and found a bed in a private hospital in Haryana. There, the hospital asked him to deposit ₹2 lakh. For this, Deepak took a loan from his relatives, friends and arhatiya (middleman) of the village. Deepak had to take another ₹2 lakh loan to pay the hospital before his father breathed his last.
With a ₹6 lakh loan burden and no savings, Deepak is staring at a crisis as for the paddy season, he has to take more loans.
“Money will come and go but my father will not come back. He was a strength for me. I can sell an acre of land if the pressure of returning money increases. I could even sell all my land if someone could assure the life of my father,” rues Deepak.
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Sold house
A man in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh sold his house to save his 23 year-old-son, after running out of savings and gold.
When his son learnt that his father was selling the house for his treatment, he reportedly said, “Please tell my father to let me die but don’t sell the house. Leave me at the mercy of God. If you spend everything on me, how will you marry the sister?”
Despite selling the house, his father couldn’t save his life, and later told reporters, “My son was everything to me. I did everything but couldn’t save him.”
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No money to educate children
The parents of a daughter sought funds on Twitter for their daughter’s education. Both the parents have lost their jobs due to Covid-19 pandemic and have assured that they will return every penny they get once they get a job again. There are people coming forward to help them.
Jaswant Choudhary, whose child studies in a private school in Jaipur, told IANS, “I tested Covid positive on April 28 and two days later, I got a call for fee payment from the school. I told them that I have paid half the fees for the last academic year and shall pay the remainder till August in instalments as per SC guidelines issued recently. For this year, I will pay the fee once I turn ok. However, my kid was barred from attending online classes on May 3.”
Squeezed out
Over the last two months, social media and messaging platforms have been flooded with messages for help from families of Covid patients. Medicine, hospital beds, oxygen, cremation and even food have cost them a lot, physically, financially and emotionally.
The glorified middle class which elevated itself following the economic reforms of the 1990s, appears to have taken a hit for the worst.
From a well-off lifestyle, many find themselves squeezed out financially, and as a result, have had to lose their jobs, children’s education, property and much more, and in some cases, find themselves in a mountain of debt. In quite a few cases, some children find themselves orphaned and families are left without their breadwinners.
According to a Pew Research Centre report, the first wave of Covid-19 pandemic may have shrunk India’s middle-class population by 32 million below the poverty line in 2020. The second wave of Covid-19 is expected to cause more damage.
The unemployment rate reached a four-month high in April as localised lockdowns imposed in many states have impacted over 70 lakh jobs.
According to Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), a Mumbai-based economic think-tank, the national unemployment rate in the country has touched a four-month high of nearly 8 per cent in April. It was 6.5 per cent a month before.
Mahesh Vyas, CMIE MD, is of the opinion that the Covid-19 situation in the country is likely to impact employment generation in the coming months.
Anil Kumar, an economist from the Institute of Social Sciences in Delhi, tells The Federal, “In a country in which health spending pushes 55 million people below the poverty line every year in normal times, just imagine the destruction that the pandemic has created.”
“We are getting lakhs of cases every day and our healthcare system has collapsed. People are fighting to get beds, oxygen and medicines. Using this as an opportunity, the people are selling these things at triple cost. I expect about 150-200 million people going below the poverty line till now in this pandemic.”
“Already the growth is negative during this time. With minimum government support, people are losing their jobs and medical expenses have added to the woes of everyone in the country. I have seen people selling bikes, cars, laptops and household items to manage their monthly budget,” Anil says. “And when the government says everything is fine, it is just making fun of people’s misery.”
