It has been exactly a week since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day national lockdown to combat Covid-19. Given India’s size and complexity, it has been a success. Images from across the country show that essential products are available, and essential services continue to be provided. Sure, there have been lapses and gaps but these are entirely understandable given the enormity of getting 1.3 billion people to follow a lockdown. This newspaper has consistently supported the need for a lockdown as the only way to help India flatten the curve. But here are areas, based on the experience of the past week, that will need work.
One, the exodus of migrant workers showed that India’s most vulnerable, poor, segments of society had been hit hard by the economic disruption caused by the lockdown. The fact that arrangements to provide income, shelter and food weren’t put in place for migrant workers deepened the sense of crisis. This caused a human tragedy with thousands of migrants walking home, hundreds of kilometres away, undermining the entire logic of the lockdown and enhancing the risk of people in rural areas getting infected. It is clear that if the lockdown has to be sustainable, the government will have to ensure economic sustenance for India’s poor. The finance minister has announced a relief package for the most vulnerable that revolves around cash and food, but more will likely be needed. Two, the panic buying of essential supplies on the first two days of the lockdown indicated the lack of faith citizens had in the system (despite the government’s assurances that these supplies will be maintained) and in each other. The absence, at least in the initial days, of clear rules to enable movement of those responsible for supplies and the fact that police acted disproportionately against those it considered violators added to shortages. This will need to be consistently corrected in the days ahead.
Three, the government has to use the period of the lockdown to ramp up testing, provide personal protective equipment to doctors, and source essential medical equipment including ventilators. To be sure, some steps have been taken in this regard. But the fact is that India is still testing at very low levels in relation to its population; there have been outbreaks of cases in key clusters; there is a delay in providing PPEs to health workers; and the number of ventilators will remain abysmally short if cases surge. All these need to be remedied. The government has taken a calculated risk in locking down the country; it needs to ensure that the remaining two weeks are used well and both the health and economic dimensions of the crisis are addressed.
{{/usCountry}}Three, the government has to use the period of the lockdown to ramp up testing, provide personal protective equipment to doctors, and source essential medical equipment including ventilators. To be sure, some steps have been taken in this regard. But the fact is that India is still testing at very low levels in relation to its population; there have been outbreaks of cases in key clusters; there is a delay in providing PPEs to health workers; and the number of ventilators will remain abysmally short if cases surge. All these need to be remedied. The government has taken a calculated risk in locking down the country; it needs to ensure that the remaining two weeks are used well and both the health and economic dimensions of the crisis are addressed.
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