Herald View: Lockdown designed to bail out the government rather than the people

If there were doubts about the Modi Government being clueless about how to deal with the Covid crisis, they should have been dispelled by its shifting stand on lockdowns during the last one month. The national task force on Covid-19 met a month ago on April 15 and recommended that all areas with positivity rate of 10% or more be locked down to contain the spread of the virus. Five days later on April 20 the Prime Minister in a televised speech declared that lockdowns were no solution and should be used only as a last resort. The focus instead, he declared, ought to be on ‘micro’ containment zones. Six days after the PM’s speech, the Union Home Ministry sent an advisory to the states on April 26 calling upon states to take strict lockdown measures and focus on ‘large’ containment zones. The Home Ministry advisory, not the health ministry, however advised the states to lockdown large areas for a period of not more than 14 days. To make this confusion even worse, almost a month after the recommendation made by the national task force, the DirectorGeneral of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Dr Balram Bhargava this week went on record that unless cities, districts and areas with 10% positivity or more are not locked down for ‘six to eight weeks’, it would be nothing short of disastrous.

As always there seems to be little coherence in what the government says and what it does, with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. As with other cases, the Union Government has left it to the states to wade through the confusing signals and take a call. No matter what the states finally do, they would always fall short of the recommendation made by one or the other arm of the central government.

Strong state governments with better systems in place have weathered this confusion better and charted their own course like Kerala and Maharashtra. Others seem to be as clueless as Delhi in dealing with the crisis. The bewildering variety of directives on the lockdown itself, and frequent changes made in the guidelines, would also have left the states unsure of which directive to follow. Lockdown for yet another long spell will certainly deepen the economic crisis but the Government does not appear to be left with any other option. Unable to maintain basic services in hospitals plagued by shortages of both men and material, the government is seeking some breathing time now to manage the crisis. The realisation that another of the Prime Minister’s premature announcements of ‘Teeka Utsav’ or a vaccine festival, made without much application of the mind, has failed to take off, it believes a lockdown will allow it more time to do some damage control.

But the lockdown needs to be better planned this time. Food and income support schemes are urgently needed. The withdrawal of lockdowns should also be gradual and better thought out. Besides devastating the economy and making it even more difficult for the self-employed and the informal sector to recover, a poorly planned lockdown, experts have warned, will allow the coronavirus more time to mutate and come up with more strains which could be resistant to the vaccines. This would inevitably lead to a third and a fourth wave with even more disastrous consequences. Unfortunately, the Union Government’s stubborn defence of its vaccination policy, which is forcing states to bid for vaccines globally, shows it is still in denial and places its own image above public interest.