Appeal to the Hon. Prime Minister, Mr. Modi.

Respected sir,

Let me introduce myself, I am Ashok Sethia, CMD of a mid-size apparel and textile company named GINZA INDUSTRIES LIMITED.
We have been regular in all our bank repayments for last more than 15 years and have one of the lowest employees’ turnover ratio with a good satisfaction level in the textile industry and we’re doing fairly well with big expansion also going on.

Now with the current situation of Covid 19, I thought of reaching out because, what we are facing may be the case with more than 50% of Indian establishments, who are providing employment to hundreds of million Indian citizens.

The biggest question we are facing today is how to pay the salaries of 4500+ strong workforce, PF and other fixed exp while having absolutely no inflow during the lockdown period and having no possibility of positive cash flow for at least next 3-6 months looking at the current economic scenario. To add to this as there is no movement of money, even the receivables/debtors have come in question since there is no certainty of how many of them would be able to survive beyond this Covid era. How to ensure the survival of the company, which has been in business for the last 30 years so that all involved and concerned are not out of jobs, while we rebuild everything from scratch.

What our Govt is doing with the strictest and largest lockdown in the world, though
commendable in life saving perspective, today its adverse impacts are way too high for our economy to sustain and surprisingly we are not hearing much about that.

We have been seeing on all news channels the situation of US, ITALY, SPAIN and UK to explain this lock down but they don’t show, how these countries are taking care of their economy by giving big packages to industry and people, which are around 10-15% of GDP. The same is needed here urgently to support the job creators in our country as well. I think a lot of countries such as Mexico , Russia, Pakistan, Bangladesh , Myanmar , Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan Thailand, Vietnam and many more are in a much better placed economical situation by having less restrictions and still Covid deaths are not alarmingly high. These countries have similar conditions like ours and are developing economies who I think should
have been compared.

But that phase is gone and good thing is that impact of Covid on people’s health could be well saved and now it’s time to save economy and jobs.

I have some basic questions....

We are seeing many developed countries being in lock down for much longer period than us, still a much higher number of new cases and deaths than us are being reported every day even after 40-45 days, with the situation that if they open,the numbers are going to be even higher and now only option they have is to extend it further or to open up with accepting the deaths as reality of life.

How do we handle this? Are we also going to close it indefinitely?
Or accept some deaths?
What will happen after 3rd May since Covid is going to stay here and whenever we open up the cases are bound to increase?
Will we close down again? Can our country and countrymen afford yet another lockdown?

I think the only way is to live with precautions now on and accept the fact that life will not remain same.

My sincere appeal to the government is to come out with a rescue plan for the industry, business and service sector who are the biggest employment provider after agriculture. Essentially, restriction on retail needs to be lifted first so that some demand is generated to start any sort of manufacturing activities. I appeal to the government and the respected economists of our country to look in to this aspect.

Masks and gloves to be made compulsory, with focus on developing one’s immunity by promoting Yoga, breathing exercises, hot water and steam consumption, healthy diet and restricting social gathering coupled with large scale testing. It must be a part of our lifestyle hereon.

As far as economy is to put on track, I also have following suggestions:
1. Allow to pay wages for next 3 months as low as rs 5000/- and max salary to be capped at Rs 50000/- which should be enough for each person to at least carry on. PF obligation of employee as well as employer should be kept on abeyance for next 6 months, as it is not about saving today but more for continuity. Any company can pay more than 50000/- to senior employees but then first need to pay full salary of lower ranking staff and workers.
2. All banking obligation should be put on hold for all individuals and companies for next 6 months with the preparation to extend it by further 6 months, if reqd. Similarly, interest on savings and FDs should also be brought down substantially to compensate this. Fresh funds to be made available at 4-5% as a part of COVID recovery to boost some spending in the economy and to drive business to start again.
3. Part of labour cost should be borne by the Govt.
4. Rent obligations of all kind should be waived for 3 months to survive with lower income.
5. Effectively the only solution is to print more currency and make it available. This surely will result in higher inflation but that is the cost the we all shall have to bear.

We need to be practical and accept the reality that some lives are going to be lost. It can be me, you, or anybody for that matter but still in larger national interest retail should be opened immediately and provide the economic package to create some demand and there by starting the cycle. Otherwise, even if industry opens up, how the businesses can run without demand which will finally make it to permanent closure and we shall see huge unemployment, poverty, hunger, crime and chaos everywhere of an unimaginable level resulting in loss of lives, far more than we’ve managed to save with this lockdown.

JAI HIND.