Haroon Bijli

PIB Director: ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to our second press conference. The usual housekeeping rules apply. Thank you for those who have chosen to join the audio and video bridge. Secondly, thank you for coming here, please keep safe distance. We are glad to see this being practiced without any need for instruction.

The prime minister will read out his statement after which he will take questions. We have limited time, and we will take whatever questions possible in the thirty minutes of this conference.

Mr Prime Minister?

PM: Thank you everyone for joining this press call. First of all, I would like to thank all health workers, paramedics, nurses, doctors, ward staff, cleaning staff, security officers, drivers… the list is endless, and the workforce is huge. The nation is indebted to you.

As always, this statement is prepared by my team. Every positive outcome is to their credit, and I bear responsibility for any deficiency. I will also make it clear that this is not going to be enough, and this only one of a series.

I have a few announcements to make on the promises I made in my television speech on 22 March.

Financial Assistance

Let me reiterate that these are only a few, and we will review these continuously in keeping with our +7 principle. For any monetary arrangement that has a monthly pattern, we are looking at +3 months unless specified.

1. The government will double the wages under MGNREGA scheme from Rs 182 to Rs 364 per day. This will continue beyond the affected months.
2. If there is no work under MGNREGA, we will pay Rs 182 irrespective. Funds are being transferred as we speak. I wish to thank Shri Jean Dreze for this suggestion.
3. We will double in the insurance coverage under the Social Assistance Scheme
4. Double the outlay in ICDS. We have an expansion in this program which I will go into in detail later
5. Monthly pension under NSAS is raised to Rs 4000 for the next six months
6. Under ujjwala Yojana, gas cylinders free for next six months. I thank the opposition parties for coming up with this

For the organized sector, the following has been done in addition to what I mentioned in my speech

1. EPF withdrawal cap for medical reasons has been removed
2. For all SMEs, government will contribute 20% to the EPF scheme, across board

I again thank the opposition parties for making the above suggestions which we expanded on. All suggestions are welcome.

In addition, all government sector banks will waive all EMIs taken for home loans, vehicle loans, education loans and agricultural loans up to June 2020. However, this is only for a loan amount of less than one crore.

As you know I have announced an Income Tax moratorium for the month of March and April for those earning less than Rs 10 lakh a year. GST is already waived till the end of June for specific sectors, we are exploring other sectors as well.

Substantial source for this funding is basis the windfall we have on lowered oil prices. We also have an opportunity to relook at our fund allocation from some presently non-critical sectors including defence.

Housing Arrangements

I will now go into some specific emergency arrangements that will be led by the center.

We have identified at least 768 locations where we will set up relief camps for homeless, migrant labourers and those with insufficient housing, by which we mean those who are living in severely congested conditions

These will have Covid19 testing facilities, a proportionate arrangement of beds. Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontiers, as well as various Indian and foreign NGOs. The Indian Medical Association has also offered services of their members. Basis both the facility as well as the criticality of the location, some have intensive care beds as well. However, these are unevenly distributed. Too uneven, but my team tells me that is a constraint we will have to work with.

These locations include stadiums, freehold land, government schools, colleges, office buildings.

In some states like Kerala, these are already in place, but we expect progressively to accommodate up to three million. We will continue to look at capacity.

Friends, we have people living in small and congested bastis and slums, particularly in and around the large urban agglomerations. We have kept some of the accommodation capacity on hold and if we see evidence of Covid19, we will have to move people. At this point the shift time from zero to full occupation of these premises is modeled at 7 days but we are working to make it less than 24 hours.

As I told you, many startups, Indian companies, NGOs are assisting us in fine tuning this activity. My sincere appreciation to them; we will extend insurance coverage to every individual involved in these activities.

Now there are some changes to ICDS I indicated earlier in my statement.

Two Eggs Per Child Per Day Scheme

There is no upside to Covid19. When the poultry industry made a representation on financial assistance, we worked out an agreement which works for them as well as for the country.

India is a significantly undernourished country. We need to correct this. When diseases come, our population is more vulnerable than many other countries, and even in comparison with our neighbouring countries. We need to rectify this, permanently and in great speed.

For this we are announcing that we will make an effort to ensure every child in this country receives two eggs a day. All children below 12, irrespective of religion, caste, creed and financial status. For this, two measures have been taken

1. Eggs will be subsidized for BPL families at Rs 1.00 per egg
2. Via schools under the noon meal scheme in all states, two boiled eggs will be provided for a child. Some states are already delivering noon meals to their wards as you know.
3. These will be available at all the camps and shelters we are organizing at the above subsidized rates.

The good news is that egg hatcheries have wastage which can be immediately diverted, and our transport minister is working out the downstream logistics. We estimate we can activate this within the next 14 days, with some as soon as today.

The bad news is eggs taken 21 + 7 days from hatching to consumption. It is not fast enough. But we will try and hack it.

This ends my statement. I am ready for any questions.

PIB Director: The floor is open for questions. We may be able to take at least three. Mr Arnab Goswami, you are unmuted

Arnab Goswami: The opposition party is alleging that there is no need for the government to spend unnecessary funds in creating shelters. Are you sure? Why are you creating the shelters? Is there a grand conspiracy scheme?

PM: For the allegations, I have nothing to answer. We have decided that we will undertake a moratorium on political activity, and we will stick to that.

Let me explain why we need shelters. There has already been evidence of infection in several Mumbai slums. We have infections reported from several cities including Delhi where there has been no foreign travel and some of these are from urban slums and bastis. Our volunteers are tracking contact points, but there is a limit to which we can scale up. We have shortage of testing equipment which will scale up only 5 days from now.

Even if you don’t agree to the data we have, we are putting this structure in place. It may seem excessive for you now, but when it seems inadequate later, you will be shouting louder.

PIB Director: Arnab, thank you. Next question, the reporter from CNBC TV18.

Reporter: Mansi.

PIB Director: Ms Mansi. Apologies. Please ask.

Mansi: The outlay for the social support schemes are substantial. How do you propose to finance it? Will you be borrowing from the market? Also what are the states contribution to your efforts?

PM: Well there is an oil price windfall. That is one. The other sources are there. I wouldn’t like to go into it now but there are cash allocations in some sectors that are not critical now. There are strong differences within my own government in it. But there is money to spare without us needing to add debt. As of now. We also underestimate the generosity of our own people, be they corporate giants or individuals. The money will come.

States are contributing to their local schemes. Their resources are limited and the ability to scale up in this fashion is something only the central government can do. For example, the ICDS scheme calls for a lot of interstate activity.

PIB Director: Thank you, Mansi. Rahul Kanwal from India Today. You are unmuted, Rahul.

Rahul Kanwal: Sir, I am tracking comments on your statement just now. There seems to be a lot of concern about feeding eggs to children. Why eggs? Why not pulses?

PM: Mr Kanwal, what will you do if you have an egg in your hand right now?

Rahul Kanwal: Sir?

PM: All you need to have an egg is some water and a chulha. You boil it, eat it. If your child does not like the taste of yolk, you could add a pinch of salt. Is there an easier way to get essential protein? Eggs have a storage life of a few days in room temperature. You don’t need tins and shelves and we hope that families would not even want to store. They can consume and have more the next day. These delivery efficiencies are what we are working on. We are confident that if we put our collective will to it, we can crack it.

As for vegetarian options, it is not just enough. We are not in normal times; we are fighting a war against a virus the like of which has not seen before. You need a healthy population, not a population that is struggling to find the next meal.

And we expect to have a healthy young population long after Covid19 has stabilized.

What do you think, Mr Kanwal?

Rahul Kanwal: Well I only expressed what my audience was expressing. Thank you, Mr PM.

PIB Director: Sruthijith KK. Please go ahead.

Sruthijith: I know this is not a topic for today, but could you elaborate more on your reasons not to announce a nationwide lockdown? There seems to be considerable opposition to your reluctance at what is called taking a big decision.

PM: It is very tempting to take a big decision and leave the details to someone else to figure out. I see many world leaders doing this; there is this thinking that a big, powerful decision is necessary to spur a government or a people into action.

Covid19 is scary enough as it is. If you add starvation and the specter of long term unemployment, loss of livelihood and, it is difficult to keep the nation in control. It is important not only to be in control, but also to be seen that way – that you have an idea of what is going to occur in the next few days, or next few months. That is why we have data scientists and data modelers occupying an important position in our advisory. We will take measured, calculated decisions to ensure that we are meeting requirements seven days from now. We will also communicate empathetically, firmly and substantially. No podium preaching and scant detail; we will leave that to dictators from other countries.

Your next argument could be that data is not sufficient. But data is never sufficient; you can’t wait till you finally get all the data; you may never reach that point. But are we using what we have currently? There are many schemes which we have for which there is enough and more data to adopt. So that is one of the reasons we have these set ups – shelter, nutrition and more.

We hope we never come to a point where we have over capacity, but hope is not a strategy. You can either shut down the country and hope for the virus to be contained, or you can take concerted action that utilizes the time that we have because of various state administration lockdowns.

Again, this is my appeal to state governments. A shutdown will not be enough. Containment will not work. See other countries. See your own data. Even if there is handful of community transmissions, it is bad enough. Activate your communication. Be safe, but get your communications 20, 30 times what it would be in an election year. People need to know many facts.

Otherwise we are just encouraging a police state, vigilantism followed by social ostracization. We have to be very careful of how to proceed.

I hope I have clarified enough. Mr Director indicates we may have to stop for now.

PIB Director: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That will be all. The PM has indicated there will be no closing remarks. We have to rush off. Thank you and good evening.

[Call Ends]