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Coronavirus Crisis Shatters India’s Big Dreams

The country’s ambitions to become a global power, lift its poor and update its military have been set back by a sharp economic plunge, soaring infections and a widening sense of malaise.


A fabric manufacturing business in Surat, India, has been shut since the coronavirus lockdown in the spring.

A fabric manufacturing business in Surat, India, has been shut since the coronavirus lockdown in the spring.

The country’s ambitions to become a global power, lift its poor and update its military have been set back by a sharp economic plunge, soaring infections and a widening sense of malaise.


SURAT, India — The hit that India’s dreams have taken from the coronavirus pandemic can be found in the hushed streets of Surat’s industrial zone.

You can see it in textile mills that took generations to build but are now sputtering, eking out about a tenth of the fabric they used to make.

You can see it in the lean faces of the families who used to sew the finishing touches on saris but, with so little business, are now cutting back on vegetables and milk.

You can see it in the empty barbershops and mobile phone stores, which shoppers have deserted as their meager savings dwindle to nothing.


Ashish Gujarati, the head of a textile association in this commercial hub on India’s west coast, stood in front of a deserted factory with a shellshocked look on his face and pointed up the road.

“You see that smokestack?” he asked. “There used to be smoke coming out of it.”


Not so long ago, India’s future looked entirely different. It boasted a sizzling economy that was lifting millions out of poverty, building modern megacities and amassing serious geopolitical firepower. It aimed to give its people a middle-class lifestyle, update its woefully vintage military and become a regional political and economic superpower that could someday rival China, Asia’s biggest success story.

But the economic devastation in Surat and across the country is imperiling many of India’s aspirations. The Indian economy has shrunk faster than any other major nation’s. As many as 200 million people could slip back into poverty, according to some estimates. Many of its normally vibrant streets are empty, with people too frightened of the outbreak to venture far.


Much of this damage was caused by the coronavirus lockdown imposed by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, which experts now say was at turns both too tight and too porous, both hurting the economy and spreading the virus. India now has the fastest growing coronavirus crisis, with more than 80,000 new infections reported each day.


A sense of malaise is creeping over the nation. Its economic growth was slowing even before the pandemic. Social divisions are widening. Anti-Muslim feelings are on the rise, partly because of a malicious social media campaign that falsely blamed Muslims for spreading the virus. China is increasingly muscling into Indian territory.


Scholars use many of the same words when contemplating India today: Lost. Listless. Wounded. Rudderless. Unjust.

“The engine has been smashed,” said Arundhati Roy, one of India’s pre-eminent writers. “The ability to survive has been smashed. And the pieces are all up in the air. You don’t know where they are going to fall or how they are going to fall.”

In a recent episode of his weekly radio show, Mr. Modi acknowledged that India was “fighting on many fronts.” He urged Indians to maintain social distancing, wear masks and keep “hale and hearty.”

India still has strengths. It has a huge, young work force and oodles of tech geniuses. It represents a possible alternative to China at a time when the United States and much of the rest of the world is realigning itself away from Beijing.


But its stature in the world is slipping. Last quarter the Indian economy shrank by 24 percent, while China’s is growing again. Economists say India risks losing its place as the world’s fifth largest economy, behind the United States, China, Japan and Germany.

“This is probably the worst situation India has been in since independence,” said Jayati Ghosh, a development economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “People have no money. Investors aren’t going to invest if there is no market. And the costs have gone up for most production.”

Many neighborhoods in the capital of New Delhi where low-paid workers used to live are deserted, shell-like, a hot wind blowing through empty, tin-walled shacks. A few years ago, when the economy was expanding at a 9 percent clip, it was difficult to find a place here to rent.

When Mr. Modi was swept to power in 2014 on a tide of Hindu nationalism, many Indians felt their nation had finally found the forceful leader to match their aspirations.

But Mr. Modi has concentrated his energies on divisive ideological projects, like a new citizenship law that blatantly discriminates against Muslims or tightening the government’s grip over the mostly Muslim region of Kashmir.


Quarter by quarter, India’s economic growth rate has been dropping, from 8 percent in 2016 to 4 percent right before the pandemic. Four percent would be respectable for a developed country like the United States. But in India, that level is no match for the millions of young people streaming into the work force each year, hungry for their first job.


Many of the complaints that investors make about India — the cumbersome land policies, the restrictive labor laws, the red tape — predate Mr. Modi. But his confidence and absolutism, the same qualities that appealed to many voters, may have added to the problems.

Four years ago he suddenly wiped out nearly 90 percent of India’s paper currency to tamp down corruption and encourage digital payments. While economists cheered both goals, they say the way Mr. Modi sprang this move on India did long-lasting damage to the economy.

That impulsiveness emerged again when the coronavirus struck. On March 24, at 8 p.m., after ordering all Indians to stay indoors, Mr. Modi shut down the economy — offices, factories, roads, trains, borders between states, just about everything — with four hours’ notice.

Tens of millions of Indians lost their jobs instantly. Many worked in factories or on construction sites or in urban homes, but they were migrants from rural India.

Fearing they would starve to death in city slums, millions poured out of the urban centers and walked, rode bicycles or hitched desperate rides back to their villages, an epic reverse migration from city to countryside that India had never seen. That dragged coronavirus into every corner of this country of 1.3 billion people.

Now, looking back on it, many economists trace the root of India’s interlocking crises — spiraling infections and a devastated economy — to this moment.

“India’s embarrassing slowdown in the second quarter of 2020 is almost entirely because of the nature of the lockdown,” said Kaushik Basu, a former chief economist at the World Bank and now a professor at Cornell. “This may have been worth it if it arrested the pandemic. It did not.”


He called the approach “lockdown-and-scatter” and said Mr. Modi’s policies had been a “failure.”

Some workers have trickled back to the cities. But the construction and manufacturing industries have contracted sharply because many migrant laborers remain so traumatized, they don’t want to ever go back.

“We went hungry for days,” said Mohammad Chand, who once worked in a garment factory near Delhi but fled to his ancestral village, hundreds of miles away. “I had to shunt from place to place after being thrown out by the landlord. Even relatives started showing us the door.”

“I don’t want to be in that situation again,” he said.

In Surat’s textile market, Jagdish Goyal sat scowling in his deserted shop with piles of women’s suits in teals and oranges, priced for the working poor, now stacked to the ceiling.

“Nobody’s buying,” he said. “Why? Because there are no social functions. No weddings to dress up for. No places to go. No big birthday parties. People are scared to go out.”


Fear of catching the virus seems to be a decisive factor in India’s economic crisis, extending beyond the lockdown. Going out to shop means risking illness in a time when sick people are sometimes turned away from hospitals.


According to a recent Google Mobility Report, which tracks cellphone data, trips to retail and recreation areas have dropped by 39 percent compared with before the pandemic. In Brazil and the United States, the only countries with more coronavirus infections, the drops were less than half as severe.

Mr. Modi’s government has provided some emergency relief, around $260 billion, but economists said too little flowed to the poor. Tax revenues have plummeted, some states are unable to pay health care workers and government debt is approaching its highest level in 40 years.

Still, Mr. Modi’s popularity keeps rising. A recent poll published in India Today, a leading newsmagazine, showed his approval rating at 78 percent, the highest in five years.

Part of this can be explained by the competition’s collapse. The biggest opposition party, the Indian National Congress, has been hit by defections, back-stabbing and a never-ending existential crisis on who should lead it. And Mr. Modi’s embrace of Hindu nationalism plays well within the Hindu majority, about four-fifths of the population.

“His protection of Hindu values is a big reason why I support him,” said Mr. Goyal, the seller of ladies’ suits. “If our self-respect isn’t alive, what good is the economy?”

A few parts of the economy are doing OK. Agriculture has been lifted by strong monsoon rains. In some cities, like New Delhi, many businesses are open again, though they might have new signs on the doors that say: “No more than 3 People Inside” or “Flat 40 Percent Off!”


But the virus and the economy are intertwined, and India’s virus graph is a steady staircase, going up. India is also No. 3 in virus deaths, though its per capita death rate is much lower.


Anxiety hangs in the humid air of Surat’s textile zone.

“No one comes for a shave anymore,” lamented Akshay Sen, a young barber with a few coins in his pocket.

His words echoed off the shuttered shops. Behind him stood a bunch of men milling around a tea stand but not buying any tea.

Behind all that, like a warning sign on the horizon, stood yet another tall brick smokestack, smokeless.

 
India coronavirus caseload crosses 4 million, stretching resources

By SHEIKH SAALIQ and ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL The Associated Press,Updated September 5, 2020,

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Healthcare workers conducted COVID-19 rapid antigen testing for migrant workers arriving from neighboring states at a temporary facility set up at the Anand Vihar inter-state bus terminal in New Delhi, India.T. NARAYAN/BLOOMBERG


NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s coronavirus cases crossed 4 million on Saturday, leading the world in new infections and deepening misery in the country’s vast hinterlands where surges have crippled the underfunded health care system.

Initially, the virus ravaged India’s sprawling and densely populated cities. It has since stretched to almost every state, spreading through villages and smaller towns.

With a population of nearly 1.4 billion people, India’s massive caseload isn’t surprising experts. The country’s delayed response to the virus forced the government to implement a harsh lockdown in late March. For more than two months, the economy remained shuttered, buying time for health workers to prepare for the worst.


But with the cost of the restrictions also rising, authorities saw no choice but to reopen businesses and everyday activities.

Most of India’s cases are in western Maharashtra state and the four southern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka. But new surges are popping up elsewhere.

The 86,432 cases added in the past 24 hours pushed India’s total to 4,023,179. Globally, Brazil has confirmed 4,091,801 infections while the U.S. has 6,200,186 people infected, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The Health Ministry on Saturday also reported 1,089 deaths for a total of 69,561.

Even as testing in India has increased to over a million a day, a growing reliance on screening for antigens or viral proteins is creating more problems. These tests are cheaper and yield faster results but aren’t as accurate. The danger is that the tests may falsely clear many who are infected with COVID-19.

In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with a limited health care system, the situation is already grim. With a total 253,175 cases and 3,762 deaths, the heartland state is staring at an inevitable surge and with the shortage of hospital beds and other health infrastructure.


Sujata Prakash, a nurse in the state capital Lucknow, has recently tested positive for the coronavirus. But the hospital ward where she worked diligently refused her admission because there was no empty bed. She waited for over 24 hours outside the surgical ward, sitting on patients’ chairs, before she was allotted one.

“The government can shower flower petals on the hospitals in the name of corona warriors, but can’t the administration provide a bed when the same warrior needs one,” said Prakash’s husband, Vivek Kumar.

Others haven’t been so lucky.

When journalist Amrit Mohan Dubey fell sick this week, his friends called the local administration for an ambulance. It arrived two hours late and by the time Dubey was taken to the hospital, he died.

“Had the ambulance reached in time, we could have saved Amrit,” said Zafar Irshad, a colleague of the journalist.

In rural Maharashtra, the worst-affected state with 863,062 cases and 25,964 deaths, doctors said measures like wearing masks and washing hands had now largely been abandoned.

“There is a behavioral fatigue now setting in,” said Dr. S.P. Kalantri, the director of a hospital in the village of Sevagram.

He said that the past few weeks had driven home the point that the virus had moved from India’s cities to its villages.

“The worst is yet to come,” said Kalantri. “There is no light at the end of the tunnel.”

 
Only country not reaping lockdown strategy benefit appears to be India: Chidambaram
He also predicted that by September-end, India may have 65 lakh COVID-19 cases
Sep 05, 2020 12:19 PM (IST)

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Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Saturday attacked the government over the rise in the number of coronavirus cases, claiming that the only country that was not reaping the benefit of the lockdown strategy appears to be India.

He also predicted that by September-end, India may have 65 lakh COVID-19 cases.

Chidambaram’s attack on the government came as India’s COVID-19 infection tally sprinted past 40 lakh. The recoveries have surged to 31,07,223 on Saturday, according to data collated by the Union Health Ministry.

“I had predicted that the total number of infections will reach 55 lakh by September 30. I am wrong. India will reach that number by September 20. By end September, the number may touch 65 lakh,” Chidambaram said.

The only country that was not reaping the benefit of the lockdown strategy appears to be India, the former Union Minister alleged.


“PM (Narendra) Modi who promised that we will defeat coronavirus in 21 days must explain why India failed when other countries seem to have succeeded,” he said.



In another tweet, Chidambaram also hit out at the Ministry of Finance for the state of the economy, saying it did not have “a word of explanation for the unprecedented negative growth in Q1 of 2020-21”.

“But it is back to its old game of misleading the people of India and predicting a V-shaped recovery (from the coronavirus-induced slump),” the former finance minister said. PTI

 
India = Late Qing.

The regime has lost the mandate of heaven. Unable to control natural disaster is a classic symptom of losing mandate.

There is no mandate of heaven in India.

The Hindu Goddess Kali knows what needs to be done. Need to destroy first and start over anew.
 
A sense of malaise is creeping over the nation. Its economic growth was slowing even before the pandemic. Social divisions are widening. Anti-Muslim feelings are on the rise, partly because of a malicious social media campaign that falsely blamed Muslims for spreading the virus. China is increasingly muscling into Indian territory.

Scholars use many of the same words when contemplating India today: Lost. Listless. Wounded. Rudderless. Unjust.
These should have been the first two paragraphs.
 
but if you see indian media india is already super power and people are taking bath in gold showers
 
Modi is surrounded by yes men. No one wants to question "god emperor". Even, Iaf backed his cloud theory, IAF is meant to be educated.
 
No wonder india want to provoke China. Becos China dare not invade disease riddle india which will affect its soldiers.:enjoy:
 
Yes, it seems India has been more hard hit by the virus than other developing countries. This year and maybe even the next will be a lost year for the country. This can be seen by the fact that due to the virus, the country hasn't been able to launch a single rocket in space this year, contrary to what was planned at the beginning of the year (I think they had planned 8 launches). Hopefully, they will soon get things back on track soon.
 
I said it before. Long before anyone was taking Indian covid problems seriously. Now all my predictions are spot on.

My next prediction is that things are going to get worse. Much worse for India. Modi is clueless.
 
fakenewjs and conspiracy against supreme leader Siri Modi g india economy is expected to rise by some 300000000% and Siri Modi g wont only provide jobs to indians but also to every human alive on planet earth and Siri Modi g will become the leader of the world and rule from Dehli!!!

wah Modi g wah!!!
 
I said it before. Long before anyone was taking Indian covid problems seriously. Now all my predictions are spot on.

My next prediction is that things are going to get worse. Much worse for India. Modi is clueless.
A man who is spending his time petting peacocks while the border and corona situation become much more dire. A truly broken prime minister. Can't blame him though ... if I was in his position I too would be very depressed.
 
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