Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman yesterday announced a Rs 1.75-lakh-crore scheme to help the economically weaker sections survive the loss of jobs and income that would be the inevitable fallout of the coronavirus outbreak.
In a statement, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Sitaram Yechury said the package announced by the Narendra Modi government was “inadequate” and would “defeat the entire purpose of community spread” of the novel coronavirus.
Cautioning the government that the country had “no time to waste,” Yechury accused the Centre of uprooting lakhs of lives by declaring a 21-day lockdown without adequate planning despite the fact that it had been warned of the disaster in making at least two months ago.
Yechury pointed out that while some proposals in the package, such as provision of doubling food grains, free gas cylinders for three months, a 1-kg of pulses per family, have some merit, but they were “thoroughly inadequate”.
“The key to resist COVID-19 is good nutrition. This does not serve the purpose,” he said.
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