Pakistan PM Imran Khan Offers to Help India in Covid Crisis

Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan Imran Khan. Photo: Pakistan Prime Minister's Office
Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan Imran Khan. Photo: Pakistan Prime Minister’s Office

By RMN News Service

The Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan Imran Khan has offered to help India manage its poverty, as millions of Indians are facing extreme misery after the Indian government failed to provide any support to the people during the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

Quoting a newspaper report about the trouble in India, Khan tweeted today (June 11) that he can help India by sharing Pakistan’s successful cash transfer program, which has been lauded internationally for its reach and transparency.

According to the report, the economic distress in India caused by lockdown imposed to stem the spread of coronavirus is dire. Nearly 84% of Indian households are seeing reduced income since the lockdown began. Nearly a third of all households will not be able to survive beyond a week without additional assistance.

A study, titled “How Are Indian Households Coping Under the Covid-19 Lockdown? 8 Key Findings,” reveals that the spread of the epidemic and the economic lockdown enacted in response have impacted the daily lives of nearly all Indians. Yet, according to the study, tracking the economic impacts of the disease and resulting policies has been difficult due to a lack of comprehensive and representative data.

The study was done by the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Mumbai-based Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE).

As the Indian PM Narendra Modi – who is not quite educated – has only been giving some irrelevant speeches to people regarding coronavirus, he completely abandoned all Indians who are dying in large numbers.

Earlier, a former minister in India and rebel Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yashwant Sinha had demanded the deployment of army in different states of India, as the Modi government failed miserably to handle the Covid-19 crisis.

As of today (June 11), India is at No. 5 in the list of the worst-affected countries, while Pakistan at No. 15 has managed to control the virus more effectively than India.

Now, Imran Khan has offered to share the details of Pakistan’s transparent cash transfer program to help the poor in India. But Modi has also created a similar fund called the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund) to collect and distribute funds among the poor in India.

However, there is no transparency in Modi’s PM CARES Fund in which a large-scale corruption is expected to take place, mainly because the Modi government has refused to share the details of the fund even after a court’s intervention.

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Rakesh Raman