New Delhi | Narendra Modi has cultivated a reputation for making dramatic decisions to respond to India’s complex policy challenges. Addressing the nation on primetime television about coronavirus on March 24, the Prime Minister was true to form.
India then had just about 550 confirmed infections, and many Indians believed their repeated exposure to a wide range of germs would enable their immune systems to ward off the virus. But Mr Modi warned coronavirus had “rendered even the most developed countries of the world helpless”. India’s recent socio-economic progress, he warned, would be set back decades unless it could “break the chain of infection”.
The shutdown reflected Narendra Modi’s impulse to rely on the might of the state to enforce shock-and-awe tactics.
With that, Mr Modi ordered India’s 1.4 billion people into one of the world’s most stringent lockdowns, warning them not to step out of their homes — “whatever happens” — for the next 21 days. “We must accept that this is the only way before us,” he said of strictures that took effect less than four hours later, at the stroke of midnight.
The draconian lockdown — imposed with no warning, no planning and no transparency into the policy deliberations or scientific advice behind it — fit perfectly with the Prime Minister’s highly-personalised, muscular leadership style. Virtually all economic activity — including logistics, manufacturing, public transport and most healthcare — came to a near total standstill. Around 140m vulnerable workers were thrust into crisis as their earnings collapsed.
Yet for all the human suffering and economic damage it inflicted, India’s lockdown failed to flatten — or even slightly bend — the country’s coronavirus curve. With limited testing capacity and restrictive testing policies, authorities struggled to identify infected patients and trace their contacts.
India then had just about 550 confirmed infections, and many Indians believed their repeated exposure to a wide range of germs would enable their immune systems to ward off the virus. But Mr Modi warned coronavirus had “rendered even the most developed countries of the world helpless”. India’s recent socio-economic progress, he warned, would be set back decades unless it could “break the chain of infection”.
The shutdown reflected Narendra Modi’s impulse to rely on the might of the state to enforce shock-and-awe tactics.
With that, Mr Modi ordered India’s 1.4 billion people into one of the world’s most stringent lockdowns, warning them not to step out of their homes — “whatever happens” — for the next 21 days. “We must accept that this is the only way before us,” he said of strictures that took effect less than four hours later, at the stroke of midnight.
The draconian lockdown — imposed with no warning, no planning and no transparency into the policy deliberations or scientific advice behind it — fit perfectly with the Prime Minister’s highly-personalised, muscular leadership style. Virtually all economic activity — including logistics, manufacturing, public transport and most healthcare — came to a near total standstill. Around 140m vulnerable workers were thrust into crisis as their earnings collapsed.
Yet for all the human suffering and economic damage it inflicted, India’s lockdown failed to flatten — or even slightly bend — the country’s coronavirus curve. With limited testing capacity and restrictive testing policies, authorities struggled to identify infected patients and trace their contacts.
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