Should the lockdown end after the three-week period announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 14, or should it be continued thereafter? This is the difficult catch-22 situation that authorities in India are facing.
Consequences of lifting the lockdown:
1. Ending the lockdown may result in a huge surge of COVID-19 cases as people come together, thus increasing chances of infections by this highly contagious disease, and many more deaths.
2. During the lockdown, people have observed social distancing, and this meant that an infected person could not infect others. This social distancing will end when the lockdown is lifted as people will start meeting each other in schools, factories, offices, courts, trains, buses etc thereby spreading the disease.
It may be mentioned that the coronavirus (rather the novel coronavirus, which seems to be a mutant of the earlier coronavirus which caused colds, flu etc ) is highly infectious and spreads rapidly when social distancing is not maintained. A single person may infect half a dozen others, and each one of these people may infect half a dozen more, and so on. This is like a chain reaction in an atomic bomb. Soon, a single infected person (who may not even be aware that he is infected since often the symptoms do not appear for a long time) may infect thousands.
3. It will be endangering millions if factories reopen with thousands of workers, business houses where staff starts working, courts start normal functioning with tens of thousands of lawyers, clerks, litigants etc crowded together, institutions such as schools and colleges re-open where children start going about their day-to-day activity, because even if one or two in the crowd has been a victim of COVID-19, it being very contagious would in turn spread to their close contacts who in turn will carry the infection to hundreds of other people they will be meeting and coming in contact with. This will spread like an atomic chain reaction to lakhs of people.
4. There is little medical testing in India for COVID-19. India simply does not have the medical kits/equipment, including ventilators, compared to its huge population of 135 crores. Due to this deficiency, it is often impossible to predict who a person infected with COVID-19 actually is (as some may not show symptoms of the disease).
Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao is in favour of extending the lockdown in his state. Whereas Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand have indicated that they would not fully lift the restrictions after next Tuesday.
Consequences of not lifting the lockdown:
1. Continuing the shutdown may result in poor people dying of hunger in large numbers as they are deprived of food, work and money, like the migrant workers in cities who had to walk hundreds of kilometres to their villages.
About 80-90 per cent Indian workers are in the unorganised sector of the economy, and these are daily wage earners, having no security of tenure. The shutdown has hit these (and their families) the hardest.
2. Reports are coming from rural areas that because of the shutdown, farmers cannot sell their produce as there is no transport to take it to mandis, besides the fact that no one is coming to the mandis. Hence, their produce often goes unsold and perishes.
3. The business houses are sufferers as the economy is crumbling. International exports have taken a steep dive, e.g. the diamond industries. Huge infrastructure projects are at a standstill due to the lockdown. Many industries have closed down throwing lakhs of workers into unemployment.
4. Article 19 (1)(b) grants Indian citizens the right to assemble peacefully, Article 19(1)(d) grants them the right to move freely throughout India, and Article 19(1(g) grants them the right to practice any profession, trade or vocation. All these fundamental rights are violated by long shutdowns.
Thus, India is in a catch-22 situation, with no light at the end of the tunnel. The future, therefore, is grim.
Justice Markandey Katju retired from the Supreme Court in 2011.
Dhruti Kapadia is an advocate and solicitor in the Bombay High Court, and Advocate on Record in the Supreme Court
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author's and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.
