Debating The Future of India's Lockdown
As India awaits the Prime Minister's announcement, the debate on whether or not to extend the lockdown is raging on.
Hi there, I’m Aman Thakker. Welcome to Indialogue, a newsletter analyzing the biggest policy developments in India. The aim of this newsletter is to provide you with quality analysis every week on what’s going on in India.
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The Prime Minister Will Address the Nation on April 14
India’s initial three-week lockdown is slated to end on April 15. The Prime Minister has not yet (as of writing) announced next steps, but will address the nation tomorrow at 10am IST.
In the run-up to this speech, Prime Minister Modi hosted a videoconference on April 11 with all of the Chief Ministers of the states of India to formulate a strategy for the next steps in the fight against COVID-19. The Prime Minister’s Office, in a press release after the interaction, said that “the Prime Minister said that there seems to be a consensus amongst the states on extension of Lockdown by another two weeks.” While the press release did not announce any decision, the Chief Minister of Delhi, Arvid Kejriwal, seems to revealed what the next step is: he tweeted, soon after the videoconference meeting, that:
While we await an official decision, individual states have already taken decisions to extend the lockdown within their jurisdiction. Maharashtra, Telangana, Odisha, Karnataka, and West Bengal have all extended lockdowns in their state until April 30, while Punjab has extended its lockdown until May 1.
Outside of government decision-making analysts and commentators are replicating a debate that is happening in countries around the world. Crudely put, this debate is being dubbed the “lives vs. livelihoods debate.” For example, Bibek Debroy, Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, and Vivek Ojha, Director at the Policy Modelling Association for Inclusive Development, argue that:
Alarmist numbers based on questionable assumptions should not be used to prolong the lockdown, at least not in its present form. Even if there are 25,000 deaths, the economic costs of the present lockdown are disproportionately high… [India should identify] urban localities, including slums, where testing needs to be focused. India is not in a position to test the entire population, though pooled testing can make more efficient use of infrastructure. For example, in Delhi, Dilshad Garden and Nizamuddin are obvious areas where restrictions need to continue. Everywhere else, economic activity needs to be revived.”
Similarly, Samir Saran, President of the Observer Research Foundation notes that:
The fact remains that the lockdown is a blunt instrument. A country like India cannot afford to indefinitely extend it across regions when a clear assessment of the risk of community spread is impossible for lack of information… If the challenge of shutting down India was huge, the challenge of reopening India will be bigger. But India cannot, and must not, remain shut down for longer than what it takes to get its act together. Lives matter; so does the economy. Let’s not force ourselves into a corner where we have to make a false choice.
These are persuasive arguments, and they have my sympathy. I don’t think India can have the type of lives vs. livelihoods debate that other countries, particularly the United States, is having. For some, particularly for India’s poorest and most vulnerable, the question is not that simple. For example, in an extended lockdown, they are forced to grapple with the worst kind of poverty, hunger, and lack of access to basic needs that cries out for the opportunity to work.
However, if a lockdown is lifted, it exposes deep inequities within India’s society: better-off segments of society may still stick to the old Hindi saying of jaan hai toh jahaan hain (if you can secure your life, you can secure the world) and prioritize health over wealth, India’s poorest will have to, by choice or by the injustice of society, be the first to rejoin India’s reopened economy. They will go to work, fully aware that they are taking the risk that they may still get COVID-19, but understanding that any more days of unemployment means greater hunger and greater poverty.
Ultimately, the issue comes back to good public policy. Taking Saran’s argument, I concede that the lockdown is a blunt instrument, and that lack of information is real. The way to address those things is mass testing. India’s current testing protocol is only testing those with travel history to specific countries, and contact tracing of those who have come in contact with confirmed cases. Under this protocol, India has tested 195,748 people. However, India’s Ministry of Health has strongly asserted that community spread is not taking place in India.
However, that assertion flies in the face of reports from the ground, such as a hospital in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, that is treating 140 COVID-19 patients, with nearly a third in critical care. 40% of the cases did not report any history of international travel or contact with a known case. This is just one report, but it shows us the need for urgently ramping up testing. However, while testing has ramped up, India still not testing nearly enough at the end of this 21-day lockdown.
Therefore, the blunt instrument is all we have. Loosening restrictions and restarting economic activity risks exacerbating community spread that we may not have tested for yet, and erasing gains made in flattening the curve. If the lockdown is extended, as is widely expected, then India should not replicate this mistake, and use the next two weeks wisely to ramp up testing. We’re already seeing the benefits of wide testing in Kerala, where the curve has started to flatten and the growth in new cases is down to single digits. The roadmap, therefore, is there. But loosening restrictions now, before we take the necessary steps on testing, is not the best path forward.
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India’s Bureaucratic Snafu over the Numbers
As I noted above, the argument over whether to extend the lockdown or begin loosening restrictions would be much easier to settle with better data. Well, the Indian government did give us the data, but it came with its own problems.
On April 11, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare released this graph:
On the surface, this graph should be a strong rejoinder to those calling for the lockdown restrictions to be loosened. It shows that the lockdown worked, and that even measures short of a lockdown, which is what some are calling for, may have led to a higher number of cases. However, we can’t take this data at face value.
First, the source of this data and this analysis is unclear. All the source says is “Statistical analysis by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.” Journalists have reported that this study was not based on a model developed by the Indian Council of Medical Research. Secondly, the government’s rollout of this data left a lot to be desired. On April 10, before the Ministry of Health released the data, an official from the Ministry of External Affairs (perhaps by mistake) cited this data and stated that India would have have 8.2 lakh (820,000) cases without a lockdown. The health ministry responded by saying there was no model which could be the basis of this claim. However, a day later, rolled out the above graph anyway, clearly showing there was a model.
Overall, this model, which could have made for an important tool in promoting the success of India’s lockdown, raises more questions than it answers. While the government should provide more details about how this model was constructed, it also needs to work to fine-tune its communications strategy to ensure that all agencies, and all members within agencies, are on the same page regarding critical data in the time of crisis.
The Hydroxychloroquine Saga
Last week, Indialogue discussed India’s new restrictions on the export of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), the anti-malarial drug that is being dubbed as a “game-changer” against COVID-19 despite no real evidence to support the claim that it is a cure against the virus. President Trump, who has repeatedly touted the drug’s abilities despite advice to the contrary from his advisors, reacted in true Trump fashion to the news of India’s export restrictions, threatening “retaliation”:
India lifted the restrictions two-days after they were announced, and directed the Department of Pharmaceuticals and Ministry of External Affairs to jointly decide which countries should receive the drug. 13 countries have been initially selected, including: the United States, Spain, Germany, Bahrain, Brazil, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Seychelles, Mauritius and the Dominican Republic. President Trump reacted positively to the news tweeting:
Some commentators have looked at this episode to claim that this is a sign of India kow-towing to the United States, or of an erosion of the “strategic partnership” between the two countries into a transactional relationship. I see things a bit differently.
With the Trump administration, diplomacy has increasingly become directly transactional. However, the key is in ensuring that these “transactions” can serve some larger strategic purpose, or result in a strategic outcome. The HCQ saga is one area where India knew exactly what the President, the highest decision-maker in the United States, wanted from India, and it had the means to provide it. With trade ties already a sore point in the relationship between the two countries, India knew it could not afford to allow the list of demands from the U.S. to grow, nor, as the government has said, did it feel that exporting to the United States and other countries would affect the stock it needs at home, particularly for patients with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.
With POTUS placated, India knows that while it has not overcome the real challenges in the bilateral relationship with this step, it has also not rocked the boat further, resulting in, in my opinion, a strategic outcome. However, India has also turned the relaxation of HCQ export restrictions into an opportunity. One only need to quickly glance at the list of countries to see that India has extended the exports to key strategic partners in its broader foreign policy: such as countries in India’s neighborhood and key island countries in the Indian Ocean.
In Other News
Despite the spread of COVID-19, unrest on the India-Pakistan border continues to grow. On April 6, India announced it had killed five terrorists in an operation at the Line of Control, led by a unit of the Indian Army Special Forces. As a result of the operation, however, five Indian soldiers were killed in action (three at the site of the operation, and two after being airlifted to an army hospital). The incident comes at a time of continuous cross-border firing across the Line of Control. In March 2020 alone, there have been 411 ceasefire violations at the border, per a report by Abhishek Bhalla of India Today.
The National Highways Authority of India announced it has constructed 3,979 km of national highways during the the financial Year 2019-20. This is the highest ever highway construction achieved in a financial year by NHAI.
To provide further economic relief to Indian citizens and businesses, the central government directed the Income Tax department to issue all pending income-tax refunds up to Rs. 500,000 ($6,554), immediately, benefitting around 1,400,000 tax payers in India. Nearly 100,000 businesses will also see refunds on Goods and Services Taxes and Customs Taxes. Cumulatively, all of these refunds are expected to provide relief of nearly Rs. 18,000 crore ($2.36 billion).
A report by the Times of India finds that nearly 20% of India’s export orders stand cancelled due to the impact of COVID-19. While exports of food and farm products exports are not as impacted, exports of gems and jewelry have seen a 12% fall in exports in March and apparel exporters have seen orders worth Rs. 15,000 crore (nearly $2 billion) cancelled.
India will face a likely delay of several months in receiving the first batch of Rafale aircraft from France due to COVID-19. The batch was slated to be handed over to India in May 2020. India and France had signed a deal for 36 Rafale aircraft in September 2016. The aircraft, which would come in “fly-away condition” and include several enhancements specifically for Indian desires, came at a price tag of €7.87 billion.
Three to Read…
From cogent analysis to potentially big news that you should keep an eye on, here are a few commentaries and other pieces of writing that I found particularly enlightening.
Krzysztof Iwanek, head of the Asia Research Centre at the War Studies University in Poland (and a friend of the newsletter!) writes about Indian authors who, thanks to their great books, have become “a part of the global mainstream”: “The West has not held a monopoly over global trends in literature for a long time, but it still dictates the language of the global mainstream (English) and some of the more popular subjects. And yet the fact that there are Indian and other non-Western authors who manage to break into the circle is significant, as they brought in their own perspectives, their knowledge and sensitivity, and the stories of their countries and communities.”
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former president of the Centre for Policy Research and former Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka University, explores what a post COVID-19 world order might look like: “Given the magnitude of the challenge Covid-19 poses, there is bound to be significant historical change. This essay is a rumination on some of the possible drivers of change this crisis might unleash. These are only potential drivers that might transform our economies, the relation between state and the individual, and the nature of the global order. It is worth reiterating that almost every parameter of this crisis is uncertain, so it would take even more hubris than most writers are used to, to hazard a guess about the future. But we can at least try and take stock of how the sands might be shifting.”
Devesh Kapur, professor at Johns Hopkins University, and Arvind Subramanian, write: “Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary responses. The Covid-19 crisis is nothing if not extraordinary. Responses are imperative to deal with the health crisis, cushion the hundreds of millions workers and households that have lost livelihoods, and protect firms against the collapse of business in virtually all non-essential sectors. With the private sector collapsing, the government’s role will be pivotal. But does the Indian government have the fiscal means, especially when revenues are also declining? In truth, this is a rhetorical question: One way or the other the means must be found to avert potential economic and social collapse. The only question is how.”
… And One Reddit AMA
Dhruva Jaishankar, the Director of the U.S. Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, recently did an AMA on all things (and I mean all things) Indian foreign policy for r/IndiaSpeaks. It’s an extremely wide-ranging discussion, with Dhruva providing food for thought to seasoned India-watchers and newcomers to India alike.
Thanks for reading this latest edition of Indialogue. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or feedback by emailing me at aman@amanthakker.com.