India 'likely to emerge' as country with highest Covid-19 tally

New Delhi - The world’s second-most populated country would have one of world’s highest worst caseloads was always a probability.

India is caught between two calamities — a relentless pandemic that is ravaging the country and a hollowed-out economy that is without precedent.

Restaurants, cinemas and shopping districts are taking teetering steps on the country’s jagged path to recovery, but millions remain jobless. Markets are being thronged with crowds, but many shoppers are not wearing masks. The unemployed are slowly returning to cities to find work, even as hospitals still brim with Covid-19 patients.

That India, the world’s second-most populated country, would have one of world’s highest worst caseloads was always a probability. That’s why India’s initial response had to be big — perhaps even unmatched.

The government’s initial communication was confused and marred by misinformation. Worse, India’s ruling party leaders and its freewheeling news channels, which have long favoured Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalistic policies, found a perfect villain: They blamed minorities for spreading the virus, leading to an onslaught of online condemnation, physical violence and discrimination.

When Modi ordered the lockdown of the country’s entire population of more than 1.3 billion people on March 24 with just a four hours’ notice, nerves were frayed.

As the clock struck midnight, the 21-day lockdown came into force, eventually stretching to 68 days. Suddenly, a sprawling landscape, where countless millions of destitute citizens live in tightly packed urban areas, came to a grinding halt.

The lockdown, among the world’s strictest, was a seismic cultural shift in a nation that boasts of its community bond. Everyone hunkered down.

That bought time for the Indian government, which had initially squandered weeks. It marshaled more resources to stop the virus. Trains, hotels, banquet halls were converted into makeshift medical facilities. Garment industries started stitching masks and protective personal equipment. Chemical factories made disinfectants and hand sanitizers.

But Modi’s abrupt lockdown caught India’s enormous migrant worker population off guard. Tens of millions of them were stranded in big cities without jobs, food and shelter.

Fearing starvation, whole families packed their pots, pans and blankets into rucksacks and, balancing children on their shoulders, started walking home along highways. It was one of the biggest migrations in India’s modern history. More than a hundred people died of hunger, heat strokes and accidents.

The migration also dragged coronavirus into every corner of India, particularly the vast hinterlands.

But the lockdown slowed the spread of the virus — at least at first. Even as hospitals were overwhelmed in the US and Europe, India’s cases rose at a slow pace.