Financial Express published an op-ed by Senior Research Fellow Smriti Verma. She states that the coronavirus-induced lockdown in India created significant difficulties for the migrant, informal, and daily wage workers who became desperate to return home. MSMEs also suffered a setback from the lockdown—the over 63 million unincorporated non-agricultural enterprises engage over 111 million workers. Against this backdrop came the clarion call for an “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” or a self-reliant India, encouraging people to be ‘vocal for local’ and striving for ‘global outreach.” Protectionism has ripple-effects—protectionist policies cannot be pursued in isolation; they will evoke retaliatory measures from trading partners ultimately making everyone worse-off.
Atmanirbhar Bharat: Fixing flawed design important (Financial Express)
July 16, 2020