Front Burner - Why India is lifting its lockdown as COVID-19 cases surpass 4 million

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

With over 4 million COVID-19 cases, and 70,000 deaths, India is set to surpass Brazil as the second most-affected country in the world by the coronavirus. But that hasn't stopped the country from reop...ening, because the pandemic has also taken a massive toll on India's economy and workforce. Today on Front Burner, host Josh Bloch talks to the Washington Post's India Bureau Chief, Joanna Slater, about why the Indian government is lifting its lockdown, just as the country recorded the largest single-day jump of COVID-19 cases anywhere in the world.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Josh Bloch. India is now neck and neck with Brazil for the second most total cases of COVID-19 around the world. As of yesterday afternoon when we recorded this episode, both countries had just over 4.1 million cases. And yesterday, India saw a jump of more than 90,000 cases, breaking its own record set just a week before
Starting point is 00:00:49 for the biggest daily coronavirus jump in the world. But despite those numbers, officials are continuing to lift lockdown measures. Millions of students sat for college entrance exams, and some pubs reopened last week. And this week, metro trains are restarting in India's packed urban centers. India was initially hailed for its control over COVID-19 through strict government measures.
Starting point is 00:01:12 But it's also a country with a massively informal economy that was devastated by the lockdown. People thought that once the numbers started to go down, this was it. They had won the war and everybody was out there without wearing a mask, without any social distancing, without any sanitizers. Basically just gay abandon. Everybody thought that everything is over and we are back to square one. Today, Joanna Slater is here to walk me through the complications that brings. She's the Washington Post's India Bureau Chief based in Delhi. This is FrontBurner. Hello, Joanna.
Starting point is 00:01:58 Hello. So we're talking on Sunday afternoon, and right now India is essentially neck and neck with Brazil as the country with the second worst COVID outbreak in the world. Only the United States has more cases and more deaths. But the leaders of Brazil and the U.S. really downplayed the virus early on and resisted containment measures. That's not the case with India. Tell me about how India responded at the beginning of the pandemic. So that's absolutely correct. Unlike the United States and Brazil,
Starting point is 00:02:29 India does not have a leader who in any way minimized the risk of the virus or told citizens to go about their normal lives. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi acknowledged the severity of the pandemic from the beginning and he's worn a face covering in public for months. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi acknowledged the severity of the pandemic from the beginning, and he's worn a face covering in public for months. So the messaging from the top has been very different in India. And, you know, India tried one path that was advocated by epidemiologists, namely an extraordinarily strict lockdown. In late March, when the country had fewer than 500 cases, Modi announced a shutdown with a few hours notice.
Starting point is 00:03:15 There was mayhem at train and bus stations as authorities struggled to control the massive crowds. Please stay where you are. Whatever problem you have, I promise you that you won't face any difficulties. Not a time to panic. It's a time to come together collectively. It's an iconic moment. I feel like people perhaps don't have a good sense of what that really looked like here. This was not merely a stay-at-home order, not just a closure of non-essential businesses. It was a lockdown. You know, no planes, no trains.
Starting point is 00:03:48 Trains, including suburban trains, which have been described as the lifeline of certain cities, including Mumbai, are now shut down. Interstate buses are shut down as well. And of course, markets are shut, schools, colleges, gymnasiums, public places, all shut down. And, you know, the economic devastation that caused was just extraordinary. Well, take me back to that moment in March when Prime Minister Modi came out and sort of announced, as you mentioned, with just a few hours notice that the whole country was going on lockdown. What happened? So it was interesting. You know, Modi did something.
Starting point is 00:04:33 So it was interesting, you know, Modi did something, I'm not for the entire day and see what happened. And people really did follow this call for a nationwide people's curfew. I think people are responding to it because I'm looking out of my window on the Arabian Sea in Bombay, and I can't see a single soul anywhere on the streets. It's time for all of us during the Janta curfew to ensure that we show the resolve and responsibility Arabian Sea in Bombay. And I can't see a single soul anywhere on the streets. It's time for all of us during the Janta curfew to ensure that we show the resolve and responsibility and restraint that, you know, the government has taken a completely no stone unturned approach. And then Modi came out in his evening address and said, as of midnight tonight, the entire country is shutting down for 21 days. down for 21 days. And at that time, it was seen as a kind of drastic measure,
Starting point is 00:05:39 drastic but necessary measure to get this thing under control. And it just went on and on and on, kept going. And it certainly did buy India time but the kinds of things that that happened you know as a response we're talking about you know 120 million people were put out of work by this right you had an exodus of workers from Indian India cities because they were out of work and if you're out of work as an informal worker as you suggested in an Indian city you're not going to be able to eat so they started walking home to their villages which were hundreds of kilometers away that's a flow of people moving on foot the likes of which has not been seen since India became an independent country. For two days the ration guys wouldn't give us any food and we just had to go hungry.
Starting point is 00:06:26 No food or water available here, nothing. No milk to give my child either. We are taking all of the precautions that the government told us to. We wash our hands, use sanitiser, wear masks, don't talk to people, keep a distance. But what about the government's responsibility to us? But what about the government's responsibility to us? That lockdown lasted from March to June. How effective was India at controlling the spread of the coronavirus at that time? Well, this is kind of the $20,000 question.
Starting point is 00:07:08 Look, it does seem clear that the lockdown slowed the spread of the virus how how could it not you know when you had so many people not doing what they normally do it definitely tamped down the spread of the virus now there were some problems one of the things one big problem is that india was not testing very much at the beginning. So it now seems likely that the spread of the virus was far greater at the beginning than people actually realized. I mentioned earlier, you know, these workers leaving from cities on foot. At first, the government tried to prevent them from moving and then did a kind of 180 degree turn. Within a month or two, they were helping these folks to get home, which may also have or appears to have spread the virus to all corners of the country. Gross domestic product dropped 24% for those three months that ended in June versus the same period last year. I mean, tell me more about the economic consequence of the lockdown. Absolutely. I mean, that's just an astonishing number.
Starting point is 00:08:14 If you think about an economy contracting basically by a quarter compared to the same quarter the year earlier, that's the worst performance of any of the group of 20 major nations. And in a country like India, where there basically is not, most workers have almost no social safety net. I mean, that's just an extraordinarily bad situation to be in. I mean, the hope is that that is the consequence of the lockdown and that things will improve, have improved somewhat in July and August. But it's quite clear that the virus and the ongoing spread of the virus is not good for the economy. You know, a country, India was until very recently the world's fastest growing economy. It has not shrunk. It has not actually shrunk, experienced a recession in 40 years. Right. So when people used to talk about growth, economic growth in India, they would say things like, if India is growing, India's GDP is growing at 4 or 5% a year, that feels like a recession in India.
Starting point is 00:09:31 Because you simply need to, economic output needs to expand a lot to absorb all the people coming into the workforce. So for growth to feel like growth, it has to be 6%, 7%, 8%. So the idea that India's economy is now going to contract, we think at the moment, I mean, it could contract anywhere as 5%, more than 5% now, people think. So the whole world is in uncharted territory, as we know, and India in particular is in uncharted territory. In part because of the response to that effect on the economy, India has now lifted the national lockdown and has slowly been reopening the country in phases since June. Today, after nearly about five months, the Ministry of Home Affairs has now issued fresh guidelines for Unlock 4.0. And with this, it seeks to allow several outdoor activities and also intends to restart metro services.
Starting point is 00:10:33 Explain to me, though, what that reopening has meant with regards to the virus. I mean, just how fast is it now spreading in India? It's spreading very, very fast. As you mentioned in the introduction, in the last 24 hours here, India added more than 90,000 cases in a single day, knowing that's know a lot of things, obviously, about this virus still. But one thing that seems to be consistent all around the world is that if you do relax restrictions on movement, then the virus is going to spread more easily. As important as it is to, you know, look at the economic side, we must understand that, you know, the priority must be given to health because our citizens come first. And if this is not taken into consideration and the reopening continues further, then it's going to get worse in the country. The cases are going to rise. India lifted its lockdown officially at the start of
Starting point is 00:11:43 June and has moved progressively further in that direction. Here we are at the beginning of September. India was adding 10,000 new cases a day in June, and now it's adding 90,000. Some of that is a function of increased testing, to be sure, but it's not only a function of increased testing. Well, and actually, I know in Brazil there's been a lot of questions about how accurate the numbers actually are. I mean, is that the same case in India? What indication do we have that the numbers we're hearing are actually a true reflection of what's happening on the ground? Sure. I mean, this is another question that we're all wrestling with. So India has, one of the things that I think
Starting point is 00:12:27 India's government has done well is that it has rapidly scaled up testing here. India's doing far more tests than it used to at the beginning of this crisis. You know, the issue is that India is such a large population that you would have to you have to increase testing so much to get anywhere near other countries on a per capita basis so india's testing doing a lot of tests a day but on a per capita basis it still remains low so we really don't know if we have an accurate picture uh well i want to ask you more just about the size and scale of the country i mean india has 1 1.4 billion people, geographically diverse place, and has, as we've mentioned, an incredible number of COVID cases and it's just climbing. I mean, what have you seen in terms of the burden that's putting on services like hospitals? That's putting on services like hospitals.
Starting point is 00:13:24 Sure. So I think one of the things people have always been afraid of here in India is that there were certainly signs in May and June that the health care system in Mumbai and in Delhi was getting very close to buckling in Mumbai which which was India's hardest hit major city by coronavirus. You know, it's a city of 12 million people. And at one point in June, there were 14 intensive care beds available for COVID patients. So that basically means that nothing is available. I mean, we spoke to numerous people who faced just absolutely desperate searches for hospital beds for their loved ones who were sick with COVID-19. And they were turned away over and over and over again, being told that the hospitals were full. were full. empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.
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Starting point is 00:15:39 I understand there has been a belief that the pandemic isn't as harmful, despite the high numbers, that the pandemic hasn't been as harmful to India as it has been in other places. I mean, where does that belief come from? That belief comes from a number of places. Compared to the countries that India is now in a club with in this pandemic, you know, the United States and Brazil, India has a comparatively lower number of deaths than those countries, according to its official statistics, than either the United States or Brazil did at the same points in their outbreaks. So that's where that comes from. Right. I mean, that really stood out to me, the lower death rate. I mean, tell me more about the difference between India versus US and Brazil.
Starting point is 00:16:33 Sure. So you can pick kind of your figure. There's a raging debate over which statistics are the best ones to focus on i think a good one to look at is deaths per million people so india at the moment has about 51 deaths per million people for comparison you know canada has 242 per million uh the united states says more than 500. So this is kind of where India stands by those measures. Of course, there are some caveats here. One would be that India's official statistics are certainly missing some of these deaths. So in all likelihood, the real figure is higher. some of these deaths. So in all likelihood, the real figure is higher. India also is benefiting from the fact that it has a pretty young population, according to the latest census,
Starting point is 00:17:32 which is now a little bit old, but still half of India's population was under the age of 25. So it's a very, very young country. As we know, COVID-19 is less likely to have severe effects in young people. India also has lower rates of obesity than other countries, which, as we know, is another factor in severe outcomes for this disease. We're also seeing attitudes towards COVID being influenced by anti-Muslim sentiments. India is a majority Hindu country, of course, and there's been escalating violence towards the Muslim minority in recent years, especially under the Modi government.
Starting point is 00:18:16 The Citizenship Amendment Act passed last Thursday. Activists say the bill is part of a pattern of anti-Muslim discrimination. The messaging at all levels, whether it's Kashmir, whether it's the Citizenship Act, is to send a message to the country's 200 million Muslims. This is a Hindu country. You're here by our sufferance. How have you seen these sectarian tensions play out during the pandemic? Well, this was one of the more disturbing aspects of the early part
Starting point is 00:18:47 of the pandemic here. It was a real life, you know, illustration of the kind of oldest and ugliest human impulse to blame calamity on people who are different to find scapegoats. to find scapegoats. In India's case, in March and April, that focused squarely on the country's Muslim minority. That started because one of the first super spreader events in the country was a congregation that happened here in Delhi of an Islamic missionary group. They're called the Tablighi Jamaat, and their global headquarters are here in India. So there were people from all over the world, actually, who come to visit all year round. They have Indian members.
Starting point is 00:19:39 They have people who come from all over the world to visit. who come from all over the world to visit. And there were a bunch of infections that were discovered after the lockdown inside this center for that group. Now, what happened after that was kind of a really ugly explosion of anti-Muslim rhetoric, particularly rhetoric against this group. You had people from some figures in India's ruling party falsely accusing them of deliberately spreading the virus and using terms like corona, jihad,
Starting point is 00:20:21 as though this were somehow, again, a kind of deliberate tactic. India should have been free of coronavirus by now. But these Jamaat members have acted like suicide bombers. These suicide bombers should face the strictest possible legal action. And that unfortunately had consequences. There were instances of people kind of attacking Muslims because they thought that they were somehow spreading the virus. Corona has arrived. This is what they say when they see Muslims. They're beating us, shouting at us, saying here comes Corona. Is this a way to behave? There is a limit to our patience.
Starting point is 00:21:03 Is this a way to behave? There is a limit to our patience. And you saw hashtags like Corona Jihad go viral on social media? Unfortunately, yes, that did happen. India's neighbors, Bangladesh and Pakistan, seem to have hit their peak in terms of infections. I mean, the numbers there really seem to be coming down. But that's clearly not the case for India. What are health experts saying to you about just how long they can expect to see this outbreak continue? I ask this question a lot and I get a lot of different answers.
Starting point is 00:21:46 The people who would have the best expertise on these questions were saying that it would peak in August. You know, August has come and gone. It has not peaked. I've heard people say October. I've heard people say December. You know, there is a sense that potentially the rate of growth is slowing a little bit, but we don't even know if that's true yet. I can't hazard a guess. As someone who lives here and who cares about this country, I hope it's soon. I really hope it's soon. Joanna, thank you so much for speaking with me. My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
Starting point is 00:22:44 Before we go today, some Canadian COVID news. We did an episode on Quebec schools reopening last week, and now there are some updated numbers on coronavirus cases there. According to government figures, as many as 47 out of 3,100 schools have seen at least one case in the last week. A list compiled by a Montreal father puts that number even higher. Quebec's health minister, Christian Dubé, says that in most cases, students and teachers were infected outside of school. There's a lot of attention on this across the country as most students go back to school tomorrow. We'll have more on this in the coming days. That's it for today. I'm Josh Bloch. Thanks for listening to FrontBurr. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

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