Study the effectiveness of government income support schemes in mitigating the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the rural people of the Cooch Behar district of West Bengal

Abstract

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It emerged in late 2019 and rapidly spread worldwide, causing a global pandemic. On March 24, 2020, the Indian Government declared a state of lockdown throughout the country which led to the stagnation of the Indian economy to a large extent as well as the world economy. There was a total of 45,035,393 active cases and 533,570 casualties nationwide due to the pandemic. Till August 2024 in West Bengal, there were 20, 27, 901 active cases and 21,218 deaths. It disrupted the education, medical, agricultural, and economic sectors worldwide. This study was performed in the District of Cooch Behar in West Bengal and a total of 120 rural people were selected for the study covering 38 villages from 8 different administrative blocks by adopting Convenience Sampling. This study used the Likert scale for survey data. From this study, it has been found that Government income security schemes like the Krishak Bandhu scheme (Likert scale score 3.91) and PM-Kisan scheme (Likert scale score 4.375) functioned well during COVID-19, which helped soothe the impact of COVID-19 a little for the rural people