- Friday, April 26, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
WHILE Indians were engulfed by a sense of despair during the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, they are more confident ahead of a potential third wave, a new survey has said.
LocalCircles, a community social-media platform, on Thursday (12) said 58 per cent of the country’s citizens covered under the survey feel confident that India is well-prepared to handle the third wave, which is likely to hit the country over the next four months.
The question — How confident do people feel about India’s preparedness to handle a possible third wave – received 8,800 responses in the survey. While 26 per cent of the respondents said they were “highly confident”, about 32 per cent said they are “somewhat confident”. Twenty-five per cent of the respondents said they “have very little confidence” while 13 per cent said they have “no confidence at all”. Four per cent did not have any opinion.
“On an aggregate basis, 58 per cent of citizens feel confident that India is well-prepared to handle the 3rd COVID wave in the coming months,” LocalCircles said in a statement.
The latest findings see a marked improvement over the scenario seen in March 2021 when LocalCircles had asked citizens about India’s ability to handle the second COVID wave. Then, only 41 per cent had exuded confidence in the country’s ability to effectively handle the second wave.
The survey also asked respondents on how they foresee economic recovery from the impact of Covid in the next one year. This question in the survey received 11,081 responses, of which 33 per cent said they are hopeful that the economy “will recover completely and surpass pre-COVID 2019-20 GDP level”.
About 11 per cent of the respondents said it “will recover completely but not surpass pre-COVID 2019-20 level”.
On an aggregate basis, three in four Indians foresee India that will be able to drive significant economic recovery from Covid within the next one year before it completes 75 years of independence, LocalCircles said.
The survey also found that confidence levels about India being able to leverage demographic dividend and create enough jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities has plummeted to an all-time low. Before the pandemic struck, 35 per cent of citizens had said they were confident about India creating a lot of new employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. The figure declined to 31 per cent in 2020 and is currently at 26 per cent.
