8th June, 2020

Every morning one glance at the newspaper is enough to bring a list of current affairs and social issues to the forefront of one’s mind. Visit your twitter account and you will see that a lot is being said about the present social,financial and political issues going on in our country affected by the pandemic phase.

The daily change in dynamics pertaining to the GDP, global economic situation,the increasing number of Covid patients, the huge number of people being rendered homeless, jobless, in a state of chaos and despair, all of this can be easily read about, pondered on and discussed but what exactly is being done about it to get solutions, to resolve the problems, to rescue people from this suffering, is a question that usually falls on deaf ears. We see a lot of debates and news report on the television trying to show the difficulties that people are facing but unless the people sitting in power don’t really take a serious notice of all this, what further purpose does it serve beyond just spreading awareness?

Even before the pandemic phase started the economy was suffering enough, the situation of our country was not all rosy and nice, the GDP was not in a good state, prices of diesel and petrol were rising high, markets were hitting new lows, gold prices were touching the sky and the rate of unemployment was increasing.

Pandemic came around as the last straw to break the back of the already stuck in the mud “middle class”.

“Middle class”, the set of people who religiously go to work, try to follow and abide by the law, pay their taxes, all in the expectation to live a “normal” life. With lack of much choices or space to breathe, the middle class is “coerced” in present times to compromise beyond the normal in order to continue the battle of survival.

The government announced the relief of deferred EMI payment as a breather to the rescue of people who are paying EMI’s to the bank during the lockdown phase but, “was it really a relief?”, i wonder !. The payment of deferred EMI came with the hidden application of extra interest as the pre-condition applied under the asterisk sign (*) in small print, which is usually not visible in such announcements that are made to sound good with an implied price of their own. It’s absolutely true even in such a state of pandemic that there are really no free lunches in the world.!

As per an article published in the Economic Times even before the pandemic came around there were Rs. 156 lakh crore worth flats launched in 2011 and before, and are still incomplete. The NCR builders top the drag . Builders like Unitech, Amrapali, Kashish Developers and a long list of their kind have strangulated and killed the dream of a huge number of middle class families to own a home of their own.

They have taken crores of hard earned money of lakhs of tax paying, law abiding, middle class common people who have parted with their life savings, taking bank loans, living in rented accommodations, shouldering the daily expenses and responsibilities, whose only crime was “a dream to own a house”.

This dream of theirs is exploited to the same extent by the builders as by the weak system of governance in place, as no number of court cases and legal actions or remedies is serving justice to the misery of the middle class nor bringing to task the law breaking builders who roam free while the poor “middle class” is juggling with their limited resources and struggling to make sense of the announcements that the Government comes up with as “relief” in the middle of this chaotic and uncertain phase.

The present Covid-19 pandemic phase has taken the focus to cough, cold, corona, fever, quarantine, lockdown, lack of facilities in the country with respect to the medical facilities and has somehow taken away the focus from the pre-existing struggles and problems that the people of this country were already suffering with. The Government did implement strategies like lockdown and its phases to save people from dying due to covid but what will it take for the same Government to save the middle class from being financially strangulated to death for no fault of their own?

There is a lot going on, the brunt of which, “the middle class” silently bears, quietly accepting the “new normal” with a fake smile as it is the only quid pro quo for staying alive.!

So here’s to staying alive of the “middle class” in the HOPE that maybe the people whom they voted for, keeping faith in, actually realize the difficulties they face and suffer and do what they elected them to do, to provide and ensure justice and to create a real “RamRajya”, “a happy, fair and just place for all to exist” in its true form.