Stimulus is to make every citizen self-reliant.

The lockdown of India which started on 25 March to control spread of coronavirus is to continue till 31 May but shops and markets will be allowed to open with staggered timings and customers will have to maintain minimum distance. Hotels, restaurants and malls will remain closed. Metro and airlines will not function. Spread over 5 days, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has been explaining details of the Rs 20 trillion stimulus package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The package is designed to increase liquidity to ease borrowing and the actual spending by the Center will be a tad over Rs 2 trillion, wrote P Vaidyanathan Iyer. Apart from increase in support for MGNREGS, which provides employment for unemployed rural workers, and free food for migrant workers there is no increase in spending by the government. Deficit limit of states has been increased to 5% from 3%, even as the Center has not paid compensation for goods and services tax (GST) to the states for the period of December to March. Farmers will be encouraged to borrow on Kisan Credit Card which already has outstanding loans of over Rs 7 trillion. Goldman Sachs predicts, "Gross domestic product (GDP) will contract by an annualized 45% in the second quarter from the prior three months, compared with Goldman's previous forecast of a 20% slump." "Those estimates imply that the real GDP will fall by 5% in the 2021 fiscal year, which would be deeper than any other recession India has ever experienced." Real estate companies are allowed to cite Covid-19 as 'force majeure', which probably means 'unavoidable circumstances', to postpone completion of building projects. Which means buyers, mainly middle-class people, will be forced to live in rented accommodation while also paying interest on their mortgage. Seems that when Modi said that the stimulus package is about 'Atma Nirbhar', meaning 'self reliance', he meant every citizen for herself with no responsibility for the state, except to enforce his orders with brutal force. "In some sense, there is an attempt to try and construct something equivalent of a 'New Deal' that President Roosevelt came up with during the Great Depression (in the US)," appreciated Chief Economic Adviser KV Subramanian. The New Deal strengthened banks, ended prohibition and provided direct stimulus to agriculture. On the other hand, it probably extended the Depression to 10 years. Explain Modi's 'New Deal' to the family of the young man who died on the verge of a highway while on his way home to escape hunger. Or to those who are forcibly locked up in quarantine centers in "unhygienic rooms and toilets, being treated like untouchables, living in cramped rooms, fighting for food". "Some kind of lockdown was necessary to tackle the pandemic, but these deaths are unforgiveable tragedy," said businessman Azim Premji. "Those sixteen young men died because we have almost no social security and too little worker protection -- not because we have too much of it." He is a rich businessman. He does not make promises to win elections.