India’s nationwide COVID-19 lockdown strategy has been praised by many for being enacted early and executed on a large and sizeable population. While countries like Italy and Spain were able to contain the virus through similar lockdowns, the same cannot be said for India. So why is it that these measures are not yielding the desired results? And what are the consequences of this in a country like India?
The primary reason for the lockdown being considered to have failed is that it is not having the intended impact; the COVID-19 curve is not flattening.
While most official sources claim that the lockdown has flattened the curve, the problem with this claim is that the model used is very ambiguous. Government officials have not mentioned which model, if any, generated this curve. The only publicly available model shared by the ICMR is not about the lockdown, but an analysis of the border screening measures introduced by India.
The graph above, generated by Quartz India, shows that the number of COVID-19 cases have been growing exponentially since around March 4th. This exponential growth began weeks before the lockdown was enforced and continued well into the lockdown period. If there was any success in the lockdown measures, there would have been a flattening of the line.
While the lockdown has not helped in curbing deaths by the virus, it has also taken a heavy toll on India’s already fragile economy. According to the publication - the Financial Express, since the lockdown started 100-120 million people have lost their source of income and poverty has doubled. This means that over time more people will die from hunger, lack of resources and depression than the Coronavirus.
The Economic Times estimates that annually 750 thousand people die of natural causes every month. The CoronaVirus has killed merely 500 people on average per month, so realistically this is only0.06% of the deaths we see normally. What is really amplifying this percentage is the consequences of the lockdown on our economy and infrastructure.
Another fundamental factor that has contributed to the failure of the lockdown is that it is poorly executed. States like Maharashtra and Gujarat, that have the maximum number of COVID-19 cases are enforcing the same lockdown measures as states like Uttarakhand and Ladakh, where cases are below 100. This is a waste of resources. A more effective method would have been to concentrate resources on densely populated states with many cases. In addition to this, cities like Pune have not utilised the assistance of the presence of the Army. l The army could have been brought in to help the police in maintaining order, build makeshift hospitals and staff them with trained doctors.
Another mismanaged measure of keeping grocery stores open only for a few hours has created problems for citizens and also increased further risk of the virus spreading, y. While one can agree that officials assumed this would encourage people only to step out for essentials, it has actually created chaos outside markets and stores, as more people gather around stores at the same time rather than at different times throughout the day. Standing in lines and entering crowded kirana shops is the opposite of social distancing and creates more problems than it solves.
So although India did react to the virus very quickly and efficiently, the problems it has caused are rooted in its poor execution and the costs it has had on the country outweigh the benefits.