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NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar on Wednesday said that the Centre has prioritized saving the MSMEs (Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises) instead of providing relief to middle-class salaried employees.
He told told NDTV that the exodus of migrant laborers will not affect the industries’ functioning to a large extent as only a fraction of them have headed back to their native places.
The migrant crisis in India is going parallelly with the coronavirus crisis as millions of them stare at a blank future, teetering between cities and villages. Many of them have lost lives after being run over by trains and buses.
According to leading experts in the field, he said, there are around 72 million migrants, of whom 35 to 38 million are in the workforce.
"If you take all estimates, I think not more than five or six million have moved back. The rest are in situ and as the lockdown is lifted and economic activities start, they can go back to where they were working," Rajiv Kumar added.
Pointing to the numbers, he said, "If you had 38 migrant million workers, of whom five or six million went back, the rest are available for being deployed at the production centers once economic activity starts."
Regarding the first tranche of the ₹20 lakh crore Central package announced by Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday, he said the government "would not let the MSMEs go under… we will do whatever it takes."
He further added that the government would also ensure that people have more money in hand.
Upon asking about the salaried taxpayers who have not been discussed in the first tranche, he replied: "I'm clear in my mind that saving the informal sector, which is led by the MSMEs, is a much higher priority than giving succor to the tax-paying middle class which had a reduction in their tax liabilities earlier," NDTV report added.
Sitharaman has announced relief for middle classes on Wednesday – offering 25 per cent reduction in TDS (Tax Deduction at Source) for non-salaried specified payments and TCS (Tax Collection at Source) for specified receipts.
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