A Pandemic Report Card

Context: Continued rise in the number of cases even after a nationwide lockdown presents a moment to consider the positives and negatives of the government in handling the crisis.

POSITIVES:

• Quick and Serious Interventions:

• Even before international flights were shut down, there were temperature checks and attempts at social distancing at airports.
• Other populist-nationalists worldwide took much longer in understanding the gravity of the situation, For E.g. President Bolsonaro of Brazil.

• Risking a proper lockdown to control spread: backed by huge public support.

• Indians are by and large willing to sacrifice a great deal if the prime minister tells them it is necessary.
• This can be equated with the public support towards demonetization.

• Recognizing the crisis as a public health crisis before an economic one: 

• It is an economic crisis because it is a public health crisis and not the other way around.
• Thus, economic packages have been of the form of relief and liquidity provision, rather than a demand stimulus.

NEGATIVES:

• Inefficient and Ineffective management of the flow of goods and people:

• Movement of poor migrants helped in carrying the virus from the containment zones to other areas, thus rapidly increasing the spread.
• No clarity about the local and state borders and lockdowns has hit the economy.
• The Union has failed in its Constitutional responsibility to manage inter-state trade and commerce.

• Insufficient scaling up of testing:

• Actual tests conducted are well below the installed capacity, which itself is a fraction of the potential capacity.
• Tests have been conducted more intensively in areas, such as South Delhi, where the virus may not have progressed as much as in others like Northeast Delhi.

• Replacing the testing standard from RT-PCR to less reliable antigen assays: 

• This coincided with the flattening of Delhi curve, which often fails to detect cases.
• Officials are searching for various absurd metrics — “recovery rate”, “positivity rate” — to try and spin a spreading pandemic as a success.

• Continuation of petty politics even during the crisis:

• Mass defection during the period.
• Harassing the states led by the opposition.
• This has generated an impulse to divide rather than unite against the crisis.