MORE than 23 crore Indians have been pushed into poverty (that is below the national minimum wage threshold of Rs 375) since the covid pandemic began last year, says a recent report by Azim Premji University.
Meanwhile, the UK, the home country of Cairn Energy, has already spent close to 18% of its annual GDP. The United States (where Cairn is suing India to enforce the 1.2 billion dollars arbitral award) has spent in excess of 5 trillion dollars (almost 25 percent of its GDP) on the Covid-19 relief package for their people. However, India, a developing country, has not been able to provide commensurate relief and succour to its poor and needy. Hamstrung by its precarious fiscal and monetary situation, India has only spent 8.6% of its GDP in providing covid relief to its people.
It is in these perilous times when Covid-19 has devastated India with hospitals running out of oxygen and medical supplies, Covid-infected patients dying due to shortage of medical facilities and bodies of covid victims washing up on the banks of the Ganges, that the country has been slapped with two arbitral awards by private arbitrators appointed by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, in The Hague, Netherlands, ordering India to forego over $3.8 billion in taxes due by two foreign corporations—Vodafone and Cairn Energy.
While Cairn has initiated legal proceedings in foreign courts to seize Indian assets including Air India aircraft, its lawyers have now gone on a publicity
— source theleaflet.in | Ashish Khetan | 27 May 2021