Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan tests covid positive

New Delhi, Mar 20: The coronavirus pandemic will leave behind a global recession with small businesses, self-employed and daily wagers taking the worst hit, Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra said on thursday.

"The virus will eventually be conquered, but it will have left behind a global recession. The costs of that are incalculably high at this time. The most fearsome toll will be on small businesses, the self-employed & those whose lives depend on meagre daily wages," Mahindra said in a tweet.

Apart from the toll on lives, the legacy of Covid-19 may well be deaths due to stress, loss of livelihoods, a rise in homelessness and in extreme situations, civil unrest, he added.

"The only global experience that has lessons for us in the current situation is the last world war. In the aftermath of WW2, the US came up with the Marshall plan to revive Europe, effectively a giant fiscal pump-priming," Mahindra said.

In the US, the government dramatically dismantled regulations and opened up the economy to trade and these actions led to a boom-cycle that stretched to 1975, he added.

"This time, there will be no victors, only the vanquished. So every country will have to create its own post ‘virus war” marshall plan & take care of those in society who are hit the hardest. Perhaps we too can build the foundations of a sustained global growth cycle," Mahindra said.

Jan 6: Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy on Sunday said the country's economy is not showing good signs though Prime Minister Narendra Modi has manifested tremendous leadership skills in fighting terror and in social welfare projects.

The fiscal decisions of the government have not yielded the desired results, the Rajya Sabha MP said here.

"Modi had shown tremendous leadership skill in fighting terror, in several social areas, micro areas like bringing toilets to every village home. But the economy is a complex system...," he said while taking part in a discussion.

While every minister is talking about a 5 trillion dollar economy by 2024, but the current GDP growth has to be multiplied in four years to achieve that, the former Union minister said.

He said, if wages are slashed as a measure to cope with the situation, labor will become cheap but that will also cut down the people's purchasing power triggering dip in demand, closing down factories and rise in unemployment.

"This is one problem for which you really need an economist," he said.

Swamy said in jest, "I think Modi has one problem with me. Not only I am an economist but also a politician."

New Delhi, May 3: Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Sunday said that India's COVID-19 mortality rate of 3.2 per cent is the lowest in the world and over 10,000 coronavirus patients have been discharged from hospitals after recovering from the disease so far.

"Today more than 10,000 COVID-19 patients have been discharged. Those still admitted at hospitals are on the road to recovery. If in last 14 days doubling rate was 10.5 days, then today it is around 12 days," the Minister told ANI after visiting Lady Hardinge Hospital.

"Our mortality rate of 3.2 per cent is the lowest in the world," he said.

With 2,644 more COVID-19 cases and 83 deaths in the last 24 hours, the number of people infected from coronavirus in the country has reached 39,980 including 1,301 deaths, said the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Sunday.

Currently, there are 28,046 active cases while 10,633 COVID-19 positive patients have been cured/discharged.