‘States floating global tenders for vaccines will lead to higher cost,’ says economist M. Govinda Rao

‘It is not the delay in vaccination, but our overconfidence that caused the problem,’ says the former member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister.

Bengaluru: , a former member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and a member of the 14th Finance Commission and now chief economic adviser at Brickwork Ratings, says in an email interview that for a second year in succession the Budgets presented have become irrelevant even before the ink has dried. The strictest lockdown declared last year caused untold misery to livelihoods of a large numbers of workers, particularly in unorganised sectors. The decision was centrally made under the National Disaster Management Act and the objective was to save lives and provide the time required to ramp up health infrastructure to deal with the pandemic. The impact of the lockdown on the economy was the most severe as the contraction in GDP was 24.4% in the first quarter and there was a severe increase in unemployment particularly, in the unorganised sector. This year, the States have been allowed to decide on the extent and severity of the lockdowns depending upon the situation to avoid the severity of the restrictions on the economy. Surely, the impact of the restrictions this year will be lesser as economic activities in many regions and sectors have continued.