According to Oxfam’s 2020 Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) Index, India spent just 4 per cent of its budget on health going into the pandemic, the fourth-lowest in the world, with the country ranked 129 out of 158 countries. In fact, just 26 of the 158 countries surveyed for this year’s index were spending the recommended 15 per cent of their budgets on health to fight COVID. In 103 countries, at least one in three of the workforce had no labour protections such as sick pay. Only 53 countries had social protection systems against unemployment and sickness, and they covered only 22 per cent of the global workforce.
“Nigeria, Bahrain and India, which is currently experiencing the world’s fastest-growing outbreak of COVID-19, were among the world’s worst-performing countries in tackling inequality going into the pandemic,” the index report said. It also claimed that despite an already disastrous track record on workers’ rights, several state governments in India have used Covid-19 as a pretext to increase daily working hours from 8 to 12 hours a day and suspend minimum pay legislation, devastating the livelihoods of millions of poor workers now battling hunger.
The third edition of the CRI Index, which ranks 158 governments across the world on their commitment to reducing inequality, also highlights that in India, just half of its population have access to even the most essential health services, and more than 70 per cent of health spending is being met by people themselves, one of the highest levels in the world.
The index, which was published earlier this week, ranked countries measuring their policies and actions in three areas that it said are proven to be directly related to reducing inequality — Public services including health, education and social protection, taxation, and workers’ rights. “The poorest people are least able to isolate, to protect themselves. They are more likely to have pre-existing poor health, making them more likely to die. Economically, it is ordinary people who are losing their jobs in their tens of millions, facing huge levels of hunger and hardship,” it said.
The CRI also tracks the government’s spending on public services, which looks at actions taken by governments in the areas of education, health and social protection. At the bottom of the public services pillar ranking, South Asian countries, in particular, are doing far too little to fight inequality. India, Nepal and Sri Lanka are all in the bottom 10, and Bangladesh is 16th from the bottom of Oxfam’s CRI 2020 list.
