A lot is not well

I live in Delhi and am safe and sound thus far, having distanced myself from the rest of the world for 15 months now, living like a recluse, a scared little wannabe. Others like Meha Thakkar and Radhika Traveler are more adroit, having left Delhi months back. While Meha now works from Himachal Pradesh, little Radhika (all of 23 years of age) has chosen Uttarakhand – 'work from mountains' is their now everyday epitome. Who is their greatest benefactor? YouTube it is, where they post videos regularly and earn enough to pay for their sojourn in the hills.

So far, so good… But the rest of India today wakes up to a starkly different hue each morning. Like fogies, most sweep and mop up, then crunch and plank on their couches and yoga mats, mouthing obscenities at the television as they are repeatedly peppered with news that is getting more and more depressing with each passing week.

Let's move on to these people who are barely huffing away in their lives, and some who have simply gone missing. Every day, almost every single newspaper carries grim notices with pictures of those who have inexplicably disappeared for reasons unknown. The list includes girls, boys and men, but it is dominated by young girls in their teens. Where are they? No one knows.

On the other side, the economy has tanked. There are next to no vaccines. And there are frequent reports of till-recently employed people selling drugs on roads and at railway stations. Car sales are down. Car thefts are up. GST collections are at their lowest. People mistrust one another. A lot is going wrong.

Where are our kids?

A quick search reveals startling numbers. So alarming, in fact, that even the BBC reported that one child is being 'lost' in India every eight minutes. That's 180 lost youngsters going untraceable in our country each day. Annually, that missing number moves into high five digits, nearly 66,000. And these are only the reported numbers and the actual figures are probably much higher.

That's because many parents don't report the disappearance, either out of hope of getting the little one(s) back, or fearing stigma and being ostracized, or just through anguish and fatigue; fatigue because the authorities just won't register cases, as they know they will only run up their list of unsolved crimes, or they know, beforehand, who the perpetrators are.

Barely a year back, I asked: "Where are our kids?" While I had been hoping then that checks and balances would kick in and the situation could improve over time, things have actually taken a turn for the worse. The number is increasing steadily and it is a telling statistic that they have increased whenever the authorities have imposed lockdowns. Increasing unemployment and a police force highly engaged in monitoring COVID-related adherences and managing state elections are triggering an alarming increase in crime rates.

The hidden fallout

Unemployment, loss of once lucrative jobs and dwindling savings are the biggest reasons for increased crime. According to the Center for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE), nearly 3 crore qualified and salaried Indians have lost their jobs over the last 15 months. I am not talking here of migrant workers or laborers, but of India's educated and qualified, employed in metropolises, urban centers and key cities. They are the salaried class, with EMIs and loan repayment dates for homes, cars, studies and what have you. Jobs gone due to the lockdown, most have had to rely on savings and premature Provident Fund withdrawals to keep home and hearth running.

We also have to consider the 23 crore Indians who have been pushed below the poverty line in just the last few months alone due to COVID-related developments. While a few of them have benefited to an extent in terms of being provided basic employment under MNREGA and other such schemes, a majority remain jobless and are absolutely out of cash, unable to pay for even the most menial of needs.

We also need to take into account the announcement by the authorities a fortnight back that Rs 100,000 crore would be spent on feeding over 80 crore Indians, providing them with foodgrain. That's 60 per cent of the population that needs to be taken care of, since they can't do so themselves. Clearly, in these dark times, more than a few have been forced to walk down a very dark lane.

Teachers, engineers…

Let's look at a few instances, like that of Shiv Shankar, a teacher from Hyderabad who was recently arrested in Nagpur for peddling drugs. Till recently, he taught dance at a reputed school with a salary of Rs 30,000 per month. Come the lockdown and Shiv lost his job and was forced to peddle drugs to feed himself and his family of three. When arrested, he was travelling on a train to New Delhi with 91 kg of marijuana worth Rs 14 lakh in his possession. In another incident, the Delhi Police detained a woman drug-peddler and siezed heroin from her possession. Identified as Nagina Begum, she revealed that she had recently lost her job during the lockdown.

In Mumbai, a civil engineer turned to selling ganja after losing his job during the lockdown; he was arrested in Malad East within a month of embracing this new 'profession'. The police caught Sachin Shahaji Salunkhe with marijuana worth over Rs 9 lakh. And just last week, a special team from the Punjab Police busted a heroin manufacturing unit in Delhi's Sainik Farms area and detained four Afghan nationals. While the officials recovered 17 kg of heroin from their lab, it was learnt that these four were using recently unemployed educated Indians to distribute the drugs.

And we thought COVID-19, the disease, is dangerous. Clearly, its tangential fallouts are just as bad from the societal point of view.

Economic chaos

Through the cacophony that surrounds us, we have an economy that is contracting by the day, with all efforts to rein in the rot coming to naught. Fuel prices are galloping to historic highs every other day and there's no sign or announcement that this will be reversed anytime soon. Scarily enough, last week's standoff in the OPEC (Oil Producing and Exporting Countries) between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will only stoke fuel prices. Should the authorities continue with their practice of passing on the burden to the end-user, one can only wager a fanciful guess as to where petrol and diesel prices are heading.

Another source for mortal worry is Indian banks and their immediate business future. In August last year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had warned of an imminent danger of bank Non-Performing Assets (read 'bad loans') jumping by around 4.25 per cent from already disastrous levels. The Government quickly intervened and announced a slew of measures to contain the rot. But things have clearly not worked, as the RBI just last week re-issued the warning in its Financial Stability Report (FSR), cautioning that NPAs may rise to 9.8 per cent by March 2022, under a baseline scenario, from 7.48 per cent in March 2021. In case of a severe stress scenario, bank NPAs may increase to 11.22 per cent, the report showed.

I waited for someone to talk numbers, but as is wont, no one did. So here we go. In the worst-case scenario, India's banking system, which has gross assets of around Rs 600 lakh crore, could see close to Rs 20 lakh crore going up in smoke as NPAs. Whew. Whoa. And ouch!

Other mundane things

There are various other mundane issues I should mention. For instance, car and bike sales are down, and those that do already own these vehicles are crying their way in and out of fuel pumps. On the other side, car and bike thefts are up. Thankfully, the once-in-a-century pandemic has softened its growl somewhat and newly-infected cases are down. This, then, should be the time that India goes all out on its vaccination drive to prevent the coming of a third wave, which we have already been warned of by experts.

But no, ironically, this is also the time that we are running woefully short of vaccine supplies. Just in the time of writing this column, I learnt of three from my own circle of friends who had to return from vaccine centers without receiving the jab, as vaccines were just not available. I also learnt that most standing in the queues were eyeing every other person with caution and mistrust, something that has become a way of life now. "Stay away, he / she could be carrying the virus" is a constant worry.

Clearly, the times are anything but good. Sure, it is an opportunity to step up the act and turn things for the better with daring policy and societal initiatives. I am mentioning 'societal' here because I have seen just in the last week what is happening in Manali, Shimla, Mussoorie and every Indian

hill station. People are crowding and not wearing masks. There is also no social distancing. There is gaiety and mirth everywhere, studded with abject idiocy and carelessness. These scenes vividly mirror exactly what is happening in clubs, pubs and marketplaces in every Indian city today. Will we never learn?

The writer is a communications consultant and a clinical analyst. narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal