Economic Survey defends lockdown strategy to fight Covid-19 pandemic

Terming India’s strategy on lockdowns as one for short-term pains for long-term gains, the Economic Survey said the country adopted a strategy of continually calibrating its response while gradually unlocking and easing economic activity.

To implement its strategy, India imposed the most stringent lockdown at the very onset of the pandemic. This enabled flattening of the pandemic curve and, provided the necessary time to ramp up health and testing infrastructure, the Survey said.

Using a plethora of evidence, the Survey demonstrated the benefits of this strategy. By constructing a stringency index at the state level the survey showed that cases and deaths (compared to the expected) correlates with the stringency of the lockdown.