World over countries have initiated similar packages. Britain announced a lockdown but simultaneously promised to pay 80 percent of wages up to £2,500 a month for every citizen. The White House plans to provide $1000 to all Americans. Australia has committed 1 percent, Canada 3 percent and Portugal 4 percent of GDP for stimulus packages to protect citizens and the economy. Spain has overnight nationalised the healthcare system. Former Indian finance minister P. Chidambaram estimates that an essential package will cost at least ₹5 lakh crores. Even corporate magnates have recommended universal cash transfers to prevent destitution.

Undoubtedly, the corona virus is the worst pandemic in a century. Globally so far 14,600 people have perished and 335,000 have been infected. With the lockdown imposed, time is ticking. The central government needs to act wisely, ably and fast. India’s poor immediately need free food rations.

In the eerily prophetic movie The Contagion, as citizen’s stockpile food and ravage supermarkets, the fictitious pandemic triggers food and vaccine riots. With the world’s largest malnourished population in India, manmade hunger may be more virulent than coronavirus.

(The author is a visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Development. She tweets at @SNavatar. This is a personal blog, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)