With the Lockdown Extension Coming, It’s Time to Turn Our Attention to the Economy
To save the economy, a phased relaxation of the lockdown is needed. If a COVID-19 calamity is not to be replaced by an economic one, this must start well before the new lockdown period ends.
Sacks of unsold vegetables in the mandi, that are slowly starting to rot in the harsh sun. Credit: The Wire.
The happy consensus between the prime minister and all chief ministers that the national lockdown needs to be extended for another two weeks cannot hide the fact that when Narendra Modi ordered the shutting down of all ‘non-essential’ activity on March 24, neither he nor his advisers had thought through what the consequences would be – and when and how it could be lifted.
In the past couple of days, it has become obvious that the state governments, with one or two notable exceptions, have no idea either.
China had done a lockdown in Hubei province, and succeeded in containing the virus. Five other countries – France, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, and the UK – had, or were about to declare a similar lockdown. Modi’s India had to be among the first.
It is clear that, so far as the economy is concerned, no decision-maker in India has the faintest idea of what to do next. In the first days of the lockdown this was excusable: the tacit assumption was that the number of new cases would start to come down after two weeks of its imposition, as had happened in Hubei. The government would therefore be able to lift its punishing restrictions when there were no more new cases
Instead, the opposite happened, and the number of active cases ballooned from 519 on March 24 to 7,367 on April 12. The lack of a contingency plan – in fact of any plan whatever – became apparent when millions of migrant workers who had been thrown out of work and dwelling began a desperate march home to villages hundreds of kilometres away with the little money they had saved and what their employers had given them. Had it not been for the prompt action of the state governments, and the kindness of people on the roads, this could have turned into a major humanitarian disaster.
The happy consensus between the prime minister and all chief ministers that the national lockdown needs to be extended for another two weeks cannot hide the fact that when Narendra Modi ordered the shutting down of all ‘non-essential’ activity on March 24, neither he nor his advisers had thought through what the consequences would be – and when and how it could be lifted.
In the past couple of days, it has become obvious that the state governments, with one or two notable exceptions, have no idea either.
China had done a lockdown in Hubei province, and succeeded in containing the virus. Five other countries – France, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, and the UK – had, or were about to declare a similar lockdown. Modi’s India had to be among the first.
It is clear that, so far as the economy is concerned, no decision-maker in India has the faintest idea of what to do next. In the first days of the lockdown this was excusable: the tacit assumption was that the number of new cases would start to come down after two weeks of its imposition, as had happened in Hubei. The government would therefore be able to lift its punishing restrictions when there were no more new cases
Instead, the opposite happened, and the number of active cases ballooned from 519 on March 24 to 7,367 on April 12. The lack of a contingency plan – in fact of any plan whatever – became apparent when millions of migrant workers who had been thrown out of work and dwelling began a desperate march home to villages hundreds of kilometres away with the little money they had saved and what their employers had given them. Had it not been for the prompt action of the state governments, and the kindness of people on the roads, this could have turned into a major humanitarian disaster.
However, as some studies from Singapore have confirmed, central air-conditioning in buildings may pose risks,. Could the ubiquity of air-conditioning in Singapore and the Gulf countries like Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait, therefore account for their much higher infection rates than India? Or the fact that they have higher ‘expat’ populations that may have been exposed to the virus in their home countries?
Either way, with the summer upon us, it may be necessary to keep centrally air conditioned establishments and offices locked down and limit travel in air conditioned trains and buses – whose filters are not as efficient as those on modern aircraft – till no more new cases have been reported for some time. The travails of the well to do are not therefore going to end soon. But that does not mean the poor have to suffer with them.
