Since 8th March 2020, each one of us was made to listen to the Covid warning caller tune for more than a minute at least once a day. You’ve wondered whether this is a waste of time and googled ways to block this tune. But have you ever wondered what is the cumulative time wasted by all of us in India?
Have you ever thought of the loss to the economy with so many of us made to stand still and listen to the tune? Well, here is my estimate :
- India has 144 Cr mobile subscribers
- 1 min lost per call listening to Covid message call
- If half as many mobile subscribers ie 72 Cr make just one call every day, that’s 120 lakh man-hours wasted every day
- India’s average hourly wage rate is Rs 180.
- Therefore total loss to economy listening to called tune per day is 216 Crore per day or Rs. 23328 Crores man-hours worth work wasted since caller tune started on March 8th
Note, this is just assuming only half subscribers make a call and that too make just one call a day and listen to just 1 minute Covid caller tune.
In India, we don’t give much consideration to notional loss. We only consider actual loss. Whenever Mumbai is flooded, the government releases statistics regarding loss by calculating the sum of the value of the property damaged. They don’t include the loss to all the businesses due to closure of the city. The latter is as real as the former.
Similarly, Rs 23329 crore loss is real. It’s like not allowing the entire population of UP to work for a day (6hours).
This is the reason why such unscientific covid measures are not adopted in other countries. Unlike us, they don’t waste people’s time knowing that such measures won’t be effective.