India’s Chief
Economic Advisor KV Subramanian on Friday highlighted India’s policy response
to the “once-in-a-lifetime” COVID-19 crisis as the Economic Survey 2020-21 was
tabled in the Parliament, which showed that India’s lockdown strategy prevented
37 lakh COVID-19 cases, 1 lakh deaths.
Chapter 1
of the Economic Survey pertains to India’s response to the pandemic, Subramanian
said, adding that the country’s “policy response to COVID-19 was guided by the
realisation that GDP growth will come back, but not lost human lives”, adding
that the priority was “saving lives and livelihoods”.
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“Early
intense lockdown saved lives, helped faster recovery. Strong correlation of
lockdown with decline in cases and deaths is found across states, not just
within a few states. Hence Economic Survey infers that lockdown had a causal
effect on saving lives and livelihoods,” he said in the Rajya Sabha today.
“The policy
response which India came up with, was a mature and farsighted one. India
undertook short term pain to get long term gain. The ‘V-shaped recovery’ makes
India a sui generis case in mature policy making.”
According
to the Economic Survey, which compared data from the top 30 countries in terms
of total confirmed cases from March to December 2020, India has around 37.1
lakh fewer cases than initially estimated, while the US has over 62.5 lakh
more.
The Survey
estimates that other countries would have had a much higher death toll if their
total caseload was similar to India’s. Using Case Fatality Rate (CFR), the Survey
estimates Mexico would have had 6.1 times as many deaths as India.
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It also projects
countries like Italy, the United Kingdom, Brazil and the United States, the worst-affected
countries in the world, would have deaths 2.4, 2, 1.8 and 1.2 times higher than
India’s.
Also underscoring
India’s success in saving lives is the difference between estimated and actual
deaths, with India ranking the highest among the 30 countries with the highest caseloads.
The Survey
said that while India’s population is relatively young, with only around 10% above
the age of 60, it has a higher population of older people in comparison with
the top 30 worst-affected countries.
However, India has relatively fewer deaths
among its older population, making it “evident that India has been able to save
a large number of lives”.
Also Read | How India dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020
“Collating
the results of the analysis with the stringency of lockdowns across countries show that
higher initial stringency in countries in March-April, 2020 had a significant
impact on controlling the number of confirmed cases and deaths (at 10% level of
significance). India has been a clear outlier both in cases and deaths,” the Survey
said.
It also
noted that India had imposed the most stringent lockdown for a period of forty days
in the initial stages of the pandemic from late March to early May last year,
when it had a caseload of only 500-600.
India’s
lockdown stringency at that time was 100, as per an Oxford COVID-19 government
response tracker index, while the US lockdown stringency in the same period,
when it had already crossed 1 lakh cases, was 72.
This helped
India control the spread of the pandemic, the Survey said, adding that “India
has a declining trend in daily new cases which has dropped below 20,000 and
lowest CFR despite having second largest number of total cases. US is still
seeing around 2 lakh daily new cases.”
