MODI RESISTS PRESSURE TO LOCKDOWN INDIA AS COVID DEATHS ZOOM

Two weeks ago, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on states to only consider lockdowns “as the last option.” Now everyone from his political allies to top business leaders and US President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser sees them as the only way to stem the world’s worst virus outbreak.

The debate has been complicated by Modi’s move last year to impose a nationwide lockdown without warning, spurring a humanitarian crisis as migrant workers fled on foot to rural areas.

While Modi is keen to avoid that criticism again, particularly after his Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] failed to win an election in West Bengal when votes were counted Sunday, even states run by his party are ignoring his advice, Upmanyu Trivedi and Michelle Fay Cortez reported for Bloomberg News.

“One of the problems is this false narrative that it’s either a full lockdown, which equates to economic disaster, or no lockdown, which is a public health disaster,” said Catherine Blish, an infectious disease specialist and global health expert at Stanford Medicine in California.

“What’s happening now is a health and an economic disaster. If you have huge swaths of your population getting sick, that’s not good for your population or your economy.”

In the past week, TV channels and social media have been flooded with grim scenes of overcrowded crematoriums and desperate pleas for oxygen from hospitals. Daily deaths in India slowed marginally after hitting a record 3,689 on Sunday, while the number of daily cases has been over 350,000 for the past few days.

India’s richest banker Uday Kotak, who heads the Confederation of Indian Industry, urged the government to take the “strongest national steps including curtailing economic activity to reduce suffering.”

We must heed expert advice on this subject -- from India and abroad, Kotak said. This is a shift in the industry’s response. In April, a survey of the confederation’s members showed they were against lockdowns and wanted swift vaccination. In the past month, however, the collapsing health infrastructure and the mounting death toll have revealed the extent of the crisis.

Lack of adequate vaccine doses has only added to the chaos. “Deploy armed forces and central security forces for logistics, infrastructure, and personnel,” the industry body said in a statement.

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