Raghuram Rajan: You have to think on these two now. You cannot wait for the effects to come out because you are fighting the virus on one side and the whole country is in lockdown on the other side. Surely people have to provide food. The homes have to see the status of the migrants who have left, they need shelter, medical facilities. This needs to be done all at once.

I think it has to be set priorities. Our capacity and resources are both limited. Our financial resources are very limited compared to the West. We have to decide how to handle both the fight against the virus and the economy simultaneously. If we open now, then it will be like that we have come out of bed from illness.

The first thing is to keep people healthy and alive. Food is very important for this. There are places where PDS has not reached. Amartya Sen, Abhijeet Banerjee and I talked about the temporary ration card while talking about this subject but you have to see this epidemic as an extraordinary situation.

We need to think out of the box for what is needed. Decisions have to be made keeping in mind all budgetary limitations. We do not have many resources.

Rahul Gandhi: What do you think about the agricultural sector and the workers? What do migrant laborers think about? What should be done about their financial status?

Raghuram Rajan: In this case, direct benefit transfer is the way right now. Let us think about all the arrangements by which we reach the poor. We adopt many methods in widow pension and MNREGA itself. We have to see that these are the people who do not have employment, who do not have the means to livelihood and we will help them for the next three-four months as long as this crisis is there.

But, in terms of priorities, it would be most beneficial to keep people alive and not force them to go out in the midst of a lockdown in protest or in search of work. We have to find ways through which we can also reach cash to maximum people and also provide them food through PDS.

Rahul Gandhi: Dr. Rajan, how much will it cost to help the poor, to directly deliver cash to the poorest?

Raghuram Rajan: About 65,000 crores. Our GDP is 200 lakh crore, removing 65,000 crore from it is not a huge amount. We can do this. If this saves the lives of the poor, then we must do this.

Rahul Gandhi: India is in a difficult situation right now, but after the Kovid epidemic, can India have any major strategic advantage? Will there be some change in the world that India can take advantage of? How do you think the world will change?

Raghuram Rajan: Such situations rarely bring good conditions for a country. Nevertheless, there are some ways in which countries can benefit. I believe that after coming out of this crisis, the global economy needs to think in a whole new way.

If there is any chance for India, that is how we communicate? In this dialogue, we should think more than a leader because it is not a matter between two opposing parties, but India is such a big country that we should be heard well in the global economy.

In such a situation, India can find opportunities in industries, it can find opportunities in its supply chain, but the most important thing is that we should turn the dialogue in a direction that involves more countries, a multi-polar global system and not a bipolar system.

Rahul Gandhi: Don't you think there is a crisis of centralization? The power has become so centralized that the negotiations have almost stopped. Dialogue and communication solve many problems, but is this communication breaking due to some reasons?

Raghuram Rajan: I believe that decentralization is important not only for exposing local information but also for empowering people. It is the situation all over the world that decisions are being made elsewhere.

I have one vote to choose someone remote. I may have panchayat, may be the state government but there is a feeling among people that their voice is not heard in any case. In such a situation, they become victims of different powers.

I will ask you the same question. The impact of the Panchayati Raj that Rajiv Gandhi brought and how beneficial it proved to be.

Rahul Gandhi: It had a tremendous impact, but we have to say with regret that it is now decreasing. We are coming back from the progress that was made on the Panchayati Raj front and we are going in a district based system. If you look at the South Indian state, there is good work happening on this front, decentralization of the systems is taking place, but the centralization of power is happening in the North Indian states and the powers of the panchayats and land organizations are decreasing.

The more people the decisions are taken together, the more able they will be to monitor the decisions. I believe this is an experiment that should be done.

But why is this happening globally? What do you think is the reason that centralization is happening on such a large scale and the dialogue is ending? Do you think there is something at the center or there are many reasons behind it?

Raghuram Rajan: I believe that there is a reason behind this and that is the global market. It has become such a belief that if the markets are being globalized, then the firms participating in it also apply the same rules everywhere, they want the same system everywhere, they want the same type of government, because it gives them confidence Increases.

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