I can relate, my house maid has 2 sons. Both of them lost their jobs, one worked at a local samosa shop earned 300rs per day and the other one ran a cigarette stall. 5pm tak Ramadan mai kon samosay leta hai when iftari is around 7. This was due to limited lockdown, full lockdown I can only imagine the consequences on economy and how vulnerable our lower segment(70% of workforce) of our society is.
Now apart from corona our main problem is over years we have developed an ecosystem around imports, China say container mangwaya hai type businesses. It has engulfed a large segment of our local economics. Once the rupee depreciation and import restrictions happened, they were hit the hardest. Our own industry was strangled with high operating cost (gas, electricity) along with free trade agreements with China, workers lost their jobs, heck even our exports decreased from 25billion to 22billion during plmn. Huge eternal account deficits, debt trap. These things are he result of last 10 years of failed policy of growth on credit card.
To undo this catastrophe will take a long time. Lowering the rate of electricity generation is the foremost of all of this, now final this government realises this and shifting from imported to local coal and hydel, will take time.
But in essence no other model apart from industrialisation is feasible for a rapidly growing population country, with huge workforce entering market each year.
Import dependent growth model followed by previous governments was only a disaster in making, a bubble which exploded and caused both internal and external debt traps.
