Did The Lockdown Work?

This one executive decision was deemed at first to be a no-brainer.

- Ajay Sukumaran

Perhaps a faint dread preceded it, blended with a resigned sense of inevitability—as if for an elemental event beyond our control, the way we may anticipate news of a solar eclipse sweeping the land that would offer no clear promise of when the sun would shine again. Still, for a country blessed with frighteningly fractious opinions on everything, there had been near-unanimity on this. No political party, no social segment, no corporate lobby, nor even any healthcare expert had offered a serious objection. Stunningly simple at one level, it was also profound in the way it straitened our primary conditions of living. Poets, historians and sociologists will have their say another day. But the immediate, practical question is: did it work? As Week 9, 10 and 11 of the lockdown saw public transport and air travel thaw out messily from a freeze—as India daily counts a new crest in numbers, and balks at counting the social and economic costs of internal migration on a never-before scale—one prediction can be safely made. This question will be hotly debated even months from now, in ever-new forms. Questions proper to governance in the socio-economic realm cannot really be delinked from the growth path of an epidemic—they are connected inextricably. But they are also subject to opinions beyond the scope of medicine proper. The original question still stands: was the lockdown effective in controlling the India story of COVID-19?