Economically speaking, India is faced today with perhaps its greatest emergency since Independence. The global financial crisis in 2008-09 was a massive demand shock, but our workers could still go to work, our firms were coming off years of strong growth, our financial system was largely sound, and our government finances were healthy. None of this is true today as we fight the coronavirus pandemic. Yet there is also no reason to despair. With the right resolve and priorities, and drawing on India’s many sources of strength, it can beat this virus back, and even set the stage for a much more hopeful tomorrow.
The immediate priority, of course, is to suppress the spread of the pandemic through widespread testing, rigorous quarantines, and social distancing. The 21-day lockdown is a first step, which buys India time to improve its preparedness. The government is drawing on our courageous medical personnel and looking to all possible resources – public, private, defence, retired – for the fight, but it has to ramp up the pace manifold. It will have to test significantly more to reduce the fog of uncertainty on where the hotspots are, and it will have to keep some personnel and resources mobile so that they can be rushed to areas where shortages are acute.
We should now plan for what happens after the lockdown, if the virus is not defeated. It will be hard to lockdown the country entirely for much longer periods, so we should also be thinking of how we can restart certain activities in certain low infection regions with adequate precautions. Restarting requires better data on infection levels, as well as measures to protect workers returning to work, such as temperature