Conditional Loans, Uncontrolled Misery: Doing Business in India in the Times of Corona
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought up the specter of the Indian partition as the country continues to witness the misery of large–scale human migration on foot and in deathly trains. However, the divide that emerges is not of two nation states but a widening gulf between India’s elite and millions of its second-class citizens — poor, toiling migrant workers. In the midst of this crisis, at a press conference on May 17, 2020, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, unveiled the final tranche of the US$266 billion economic stimulus package meant to assuage the plight of the downtrodden.