The ongoing coronavirus crisis and lockdown has disrupted the whole world’s economy and turned the lower middle class people to new poor of the society. Private school teachers, office attendants, receptionists, beauticians, mobile phone service, repair shop owners and many more who fall in the category of 5,000 to 15,000 monthly salaries are badly disrupted. Most of them have not received the salaries of one or more months and hardly have any savings to come up to, also many of them fear the job loss after the lockdown gets lifted. It’s not only the socially poor and migrants are badly hit but the lower middle class with meagre income are also affected by the coronavirus crisis, the only difference is they are not getting equal attention.
The families which are registered below poverty lines are getting assistance in the form of cooked food, ration and financial help from central and state government, NGOs and philanthropists. A BPL family with a white ration card can get Rs 1500 financial aid, 12kg rice as announced by the government and assistance from the centre during the lockdown period. Even those who do not have ration cards are entitled of cooked food from various NGOs and philanthropists. On the other hand, the lower middle class is left high and dry as they cannot extend their hands in front of government due to their dignity while NGOs and philanthropists will not provide them assistance. It is also mentioned that all the programmes of NGOs and philanthropists are exclusively designed for poor who are indeed poor but the lower middle class are left out.
Mazher Hussain, Executive Director of Confederation of Voluntary Associations (COVA) said that such types of people are there in every family and we can find them among our own relatives.
These are those people who do not extend their hands in front of someone or stand in long lines for aid. They work hard and carry out their lives but the crisis has made them vulnerable, many of them have not received salary of March and may not receive for couple more months. Most of the lower middle class people are sole bread earners and even if the spouse works they can only workout the essential needs of the house. COVA is an organisation which works among economically weaker sections, women, refugees and migrant workers. The organisation says that if they don’t want to give donations, its okay but they can help people among their own relatives. Such lower middle class people struggle in their lives every day but somehow manage to get their work done without anyone’s help but this lockdown has left them vulnerable and helpless.
The coronavirus has sent billions into panic; the lockdown imposed in India is the very severe without much discussion. Everything is very confusing and we don’t know for how long the government will want us to maintain ‘social distancing’ and ‘self quarantine’ even after the lockdown is over.
