Number13

Almost everything. The Centre has moved at a snail’s pace tackling Covid19, paving the way for chaos and calamity. Now, the bottom of the ladder of the society is bearing the brunt of state inertia

On May 12, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a Rs 20-lakh-crore stimulus for India’s Covid-ravaged economy. The announcement comes at a time the country is facing the double jeopardy of fast-spreading Covid19 infections and a collapsing economy. Even though most Covid-hit economies, including the U.S. and Japan, had launched economic succour much earlier on the pandemic timeline, in India the PM’s package arrived only on the 49th day of the lockdown. The details of the package are yet to be revealed by the Finance Ministry.

On March 22, when the PM announced the Janata Curfew, the number of Covid19 infections in India was 396. On March 25, Day 1 of the nationwide lockdown, it was 657. The country added 21 new cases that day. On May 11, on the day the PM interacted with State chief ministers and asked them to ramp up economic activities, India added 4,213 new cases, taking the total to 67,153. It’s only a matter of days before India would surpass the infection tally of China (84,011), where the outbreak originated. Indian economy, ailing well before the coronavirus crisis hit the country, is also in very bad shape. In the current financial year, the economy is expected to contract by 5.2%, according to brokerage firm Nomura. This means India is falling into a recession (negative growth in two consecutive quarters).

Counter productive

India’s situation is grimmer than that of China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan or Vietnam. All these countries managed to arrest the spread of the virus during lockdowns. But India announced a lockdown before the country was hit badly (enough) and, still, failed to contain the spread of the virus. Only a few States — such as Kerala and Goa — managed to fight the virus effectively during the lockdown.

The fault lies with the Centre’s approach towards the pandemic. The lockdown, implemented on a four-hour notice on March 25, proved counterproductive. It left millions, including the poor migrant workers, stranded in big cities. The government could have given time before the lockdown kicked in, for those who were stranded to travel back home in a controlled manner.

Also, there should have been a thought-through plan to address the issues of the migrant labourers, who were stuck in big cities with no jobs, no social security and little money. The government could have facilitated their return to native states before the lockdown kicked in. Instead, the lockdown left them in penury. Many of them started walking hundreds of kilometres back home and some of them died on the way.

It was only in the third phase of the lockdown after infections started spreading across the country, the government arranged special trains to take the migrant labourers home (and the Railways charged them extra Rs 50 for the tickets!). In all practical means, the jobless migrant workers who were stuck in the cities were abandoned by both capitalism and the state.

Locked, down

The lockdown is not a magic bullet. What really matters is what the government is doing during the lockdown. Basically, the State governments and health workers should have gone for aggressive testing to identify as many infections as possible. They should trace the source of all those infections and quarantine all those who came in contact with the patients. Only then the community spread could have been avoided.

Kerala here is a case in point. Most states hit by the virus took a lethargic approach towards tracing and testing, allowing the virus to spread freely. Take the case of Tamil Nadu where the situation was under control in the initial weeks of the lockdown. But later, as a popular market in Chennai continued to operate without any social distancing norms, the city emerged as a new cluster. The story of Gujarat is worse, where the case fatality rate is over 7%.

Finally, there’s no national strategy to fight the pandemic and support the economy. The states that did well in containing the outbreak did it on their own. On March 20, before even the national lockdown was announced, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan had announced a Rs 20,000 crore economic package. The Kerala government had put in place a comprehensive anti-Covid19 strategy that addressed not just the containment of virus through aggressive testing, tracing and isolating, but also the material needs of the people who were stuck in the state during the lockdown. This should have been the national approach.

The challenge is that infections in India haven’t peaked yet. During the past 50 days, the Centre shied away from offering any major financial assistance to the badly affected. Now, the government is planning to reopen the economy, which will most likely send the cases soaring. During the lockdown, the government should have built makeshift hospitals, readied enough ventilators and even taken over private healthcare facilities. No such action was initiated. Hospitals in Mumbai, Chennai and Ahmedabad are already overcrowded and have started showing strains. If the trend continues, a tragedy is awaiting India.