India Crosses the One Million Mark
As COVID-19 spreads, India passes a milestone it had hoped to avoid reaching entirely
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.
Thank you very much for subscribing. My writing, and this newsletter, benefits from your feedback, so please do not hesitate to send any suggestions, critiques, or ideas to aman@amanthakker.com.
India Crosses One Million Total Confirmed Cases of COVID-19
Last week Friday, India crossed the one million mark of total confirmed cases of COVID-19 in country. India passed the milestone less than a week after crossing Russia to become the third-hardest hit country after the United States and Brazil, and continued to register record number of daily cases of COVID-19, reaching as high as 38,902 on Saturday, June 18.
How did we get here? This question has been top of mind for everyone - from Indian citizens to reporters to policymakers. After all, India took swift and bold decisions in March to avoid getting to this point in the first place. Between March 11 and March 25, India suspended all tourist visas, grounded all flights, closed its airspace, and entered into a nationwide lockdown. All of these steps took place at a time when India registered only 519 cases and 10 deaths (as of March 25, when the lockdown was announced). All of these steps were taken to limit the spread of the disease, ensure social distancing, and flatten the curve.
However, the curve today, far from being flattened, looks like this:
So where did it go wrong? Did we lockdown too early? Or too late? Did we “unlock” or lift restrictions at the right time, or should the restrictions have stayed on for longer? Did we give enough notice to make the lockdown effective at all? Public health experts are better placed to answer these questions.
However, today’s newsletter will look at where the government’s approach - the mindset that drove its decision-making - impacted how things went wrong.
Lockdowns are, at their core, blunt instruments. But they can be effective if governments can invest that time they gain from citizens being in lockdown to scale implementation of a “test, isolate, and treat” strategy. Health experts in India, including those at the Indian Council of Medical Research, concurred, saying that the lockdown was only the first step, and that it gave the government some breathing room as it slowed, but did not stop, the growth of COVID-19 cases.
Unfortunately, the government did not use that breathing room to boost testing, keep people socially distant as best it could, and ramp up medical capacity. Rather than doing what was necessary, the strategy remained on highlighting successes wherever the government could, even if they didn’t mean much.
Testing per capita in India remains low, with only 9.73 tests per 1000 people. In hard-hit cities like Mumbai, a doctor’s prescription was required for a COVID-19 test until July 7, underscoring just how far India remained from wide-spread and open public testing of even asymptomatic cases. Public health experts, such as President of Public Health Foundation of India, Prof. K Srinath Reddy, noted that contact tracing was not up to par, and that India was slow in “building up strong contact tracing, household surveillance of people with symptoms, getting them tested quickly.”
Finally, both the lockdown and the “unlock” process underscore he government’s inability to uphold the “isolate” leg of the “test, isolate, and treat” triad. The government’s sudden lockdown announcement led to a major humanitarian crisis as millions of Indian citizens were stranded and unable to return home. Far from maintaining social distance, they were forced to confront a choice between walking thousands of kilometers to their homes or struggle without food or income as the government dithered on how to respond. More recently, the center’s push to states to “unlock, unlock, unlock” has similarly led to a “sudden release phenomenon” where citizens are more complacent than before about taking precautionary measures in public places.
Rather than manage this “test, isolate, and treat” strategy, what it seemed the government did with the breathing room afforded to it by the lockdown was advance a falsely optimistic, even jingoistic view of Indian victory over the virus. In his first public engagement after announcing the lockdown, Prime Minister Modi said “The war that the whole country is now fighting against corona will take 21 days.” The press conferences by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare have seen a common theme: to emphasize how India is doing better than other countries, despite its resource constraints and density.
Recently, the Ministry has played up the fact that India’s COVID-19 fatality rate is considerably lower than other countries. A recent press release touts that India’s “Case Fatality Rate” has fallen below 2.5%. However, that may not necessarily be cause for celebration. As Joanna Slater and Niha Masih of The Washington Post point out:
In normal times, an estimated 20 percent of deaths in India aren’t reported at all, according to government statistics, often because they occur at home and far from cities. The gaps in India’s data mean the true number of covid-19 deaths is higher than the official figure, but no one knows by exactly how much in the absence of further research, said K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, an independent initiative that conducts research and training across the country.
Reddy added there are also other factors probably lowering the number of deaths. They include India’s comparatively young population and the fact that the majority of citizens live in rural areas, where density is lower, providing fewer opportunities for the virus to spread.
In one specific city - in Vadodra, Gujarat - they found that:
… the official figures show that the total number of coronavirus cases has increased by more than 2,000 since the start of June. But the number of deaths has barely budged, rising by just three from 57 to 60.
Meanwhile, just one of the city’s hospitals has recorded at least 100 coronavirus deaths, outstripping the official toll, according to a person with access to medical records who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
But perhaps nowhere is the government’s falsely optimistic approach more evident that in the Ministry’s insistence on community spread of the virus in India. As recently as last week, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare continued to maintain that India was not experiencing community transmission of the virus - a claim that public health experts describe as untenable, even laughable.
Ultimately, what it comes down to is that the government has been quick to point out any “successes” - even if they may not mean much medically or scientifically - in its approach to combating COVID-19, while making only slow progress on necessary action items as advised by the scientific community, such as widespread, public testing. With such an approach, it is no surprise that we are where we are - crossing one million cases, with a return to lockdown in several states, and no sign of a slowdown in the growth of cases.
India’s peak likely anywhere from a few weeks (early August) to a few months (November) away. The time for India adjust course is now. The playbook remains not all too different from what public health experts have been saying for a few months now. We need to urgently get back on track to a strategy of “test, isolate, and treat.”
If you would like to support Indialogue, please consider sharing the newsletter with others who might enjoy it using the button below!
A Quick India-China Disengagement Update
The disengagement process along the Line of Actual Control continues to be a slow process.
A fourth meeting between the Corps Commanders of the Indian Army and the People’s Liberation Army met on July 14. The meeting reportedly lasted over 14 hours, and focused on Pangong Tso and Depsang. For background:
In Pangong Tso, China had come in 8km from Finger 8 to Finger 4. Chinese troops have since reportedly moved back to Finger 5, but have maintained positions on the ridge lines above Finger 4. India has demanded Chinese troops return to Finger 8, where its conception of the LAC lies.
In Depsang, Chinese troops have obstructed Indian patrols at Bottleneck, or the Y-junction. The junction is located 18km into Indian territory, and is “less than 30 km from the DBO airfield and around 7 km from Burtse town on the strategic DSDBO road.”
While last week saw reporting on disengagement on two points points of friction - the Galwan River Valley (Patrol Point (PP)-14) and Hot Springs (PP-15) - the process remains slow. Indian Army sources told Vijaita Singh of The Hindu that in Hot Springs, “Chinese troops had at one stage entered around 5 km on the Indian side of PP-15 in May, and as per a disengagement plan, moved back 2.5 km and another 1 km in subsequent phases and around 1.5 km was yet to be vacated.”
This week’s expert round-up comes from a collection of articles published as part of the cover story of India Today’s magazine. Must-read articles include:
Amb. Shivshankar Menon, former National Security Advisor of India: India-China: Time for a reset
Dr. Tanvi Madan, Senior Fellow and director of The India Project at the Brookings Institution: What the China crisis could mean for Indo-US ties
Admiral Arun Prakash, former Chief of Naval Staff: India’s Ocean, China’s Sea
Dr. Arvind Panagariya, Professor at Columbia University and former Vice Chair of NITI Aayog: How to distance from China?
Amb. Kishore Mahbubani, Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore: India’s tryst with the Asian century
I also highly recommend “Battle in the Himalayas” by Jin Wu and Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times, which has detailed and high-resolution imagery of the various stand-off points along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.
A Brief Self-Promotional Interlude
Last week, the Center for Strategic and International Studies published my commentary on the implications of the Sino-Indian clashes on U.S.-India ties. In it, I argue:
The violent clashes between India and China will likely be a turning point for relations between the two countries, reinforcing India’s desire to deepen ties with key partners to balance against China. In this context, while India may take an even more assertive stance against China, it may look to engage more with the United States. However, attempts to deepen such engagement between Delhi and Washington will face challenges, as long-standing concerns from both sides remain unaddressed. The path forward, therefore, will require both sides to optimize existing elements and open new areas of cooperation, while overcoming those irritants.
You can read the full piece here. And as always, please do email me any feedback or suggestions you have.
News Roundup
The government of Iran has announced it will proceed with the construction of a rail line from Chabahar port to Zahedan without India, despite an agreement for joint construction between both countries. The Iranian government cited Indian delays on funding and on commencement of the project as its rationale for the decision, although the Indian government has said it had not received any response from Iran on the future of the project since December 2019.
After banning 59 Chinese apps, the Indian government has quizzed companies about their practices, using a questionnaire with 77 questions about whether the app has censored content, worked on behalf of a foreign government, or lobbied influencers. One question in particular that has been reported by Reuters is: “In the aftermath of the Pulwama Attack of 2019, did the company/app censor content relating to the attack or its perpetrators?”
The CEO of Google and Alphabet, Inc., Sundar Pichai, announced the creation of the Google for India Digitization Fund, through which the company would invest $10 billion (Rs. 75,000 crore) over the next 5-7 years to focus on four key priorities to advance digitization in India.
The Government of India and the European Union issued a Joint Statement “to strengthen the EU-India Strategic Partnership” following the conclusion of the 15th EU-India Summit in July 15.
India has proposed building a road through Bhutan’s Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary to connect the Indian cities of Guwahati in Assam to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, reducing the distance between the two cities to just 150 km by road. The proposal comes as China announced that the sanctuary was disputed territory and belonged to China - a claim that has little historical backing.
The U.S.-India Commercial Dialogue between the Indian Minister for Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal, and U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, concluded on July 15 with no substantive announcement on the pending limited trade deal between both countries. Both countries, however, did say that “substantial progress” had been made on “most of the outstanding issues.” Both ministers also discussed the possibility of a free-trade agreement (FTA), a suggestion which was echoed by the U.S.-India CEO Forum, which also met last week.
Reliance Jio announced its 14th deal since April 2020, revealing that Google will invest around $4.5 billion (Rs 33,737 crore) for 7.7% equity in the company. Google’s investment follows those of a suite of other companies, such as Facebook, Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, KKR & Co., General Atlantic LLC, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Mubadala Investment Co., Qualcomm Ventures, and Intel, which have pumped billions into the company since April.
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.
Dr. Jagannath Panda, Research Fellow and Coordinator of the East Asia Centre at Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, writes: “In brief, the inclusion of Australia in Malabar allows the Quad process to emerge as a coalition of structured maritime partnerships, strengthen threat assessment capabilities, and enhance the maritime roles and missions of the four naval powers — Australia, Japan, India, and the United States. In other words, an expanded Malabar points to the emergence of a structured maritime coalition in the Indo-Pacific, amounting to an emergent defense maritime architecture vis-à-vis a revisionist China.”
Myra MacDonald, author of Heights of Madness, One Woman’s Journey in Pursuit of a Secret War on the Siachen War, and Defeat is an Orphan, How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War and India-Pakistan relations after the 1998 nuclear tests, argues: “Focusing on the question of whether or not the Indian Army retains a tactical foothold in the Galwan Valley obscures more than it reveals. Even in an old-fashioned conventional land war, the terrain in Galwan is such that it would not be a defensible position; in a modern war with airpower and satellite targeting, it would be irrelevant. Instead, there is a need to step back and retest all the implicit assumptions that have led to the armies of three nuclear-armed powers — India, China, and Pakistan — fighting over uninhabited high-altitude terrain where even breathing can be a struggle.”
Donald Camp, Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former Senior Director for South and Central Asia on the National Security Council, writes: “The visit of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington between July 17 and July 19, 2005, was heralded as a new beginning in the US-India partnership by both the countries. The highlight of the summit – an agreement to cooperate in civil nuclear power – was indeed path breaking as it upended the US (and international) focus on rolling back India’s nuclear weapons capabilities, and implicitly acknowledged India’s status as a nuclear weapons power. Fifteen years later, has the agreement – and the partnership – lived up to the hype? The answer is mixed.”
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.