36 Asia The EconomistMarch 28th 2020
O
n march 17 thImran Khan, the prime
minister of Pakistan, declared that
there would be no national lockdown to
block the spread of covid-19. “If we shut
down the cities,” he said, “we will save
them from corona at one end, but they will
die from hunger on the other side.” Barely a
week later, not only have 210m Pakistanis
been confined to their homes; on March
24th next-door India shut in all 1.3bn of its
citizens, too.
The unhappy neighbours did not co-or-
dinate these moves. Indeed, the two
scarcely communicate. Earlier this month,
arguments over Kashmir nearly wrecked a
top-level virtual meeting to plan a regional
response to covid-19. Their approaches to
the epidemic itself have been different,
too. Whereas India’s order for a strict 21-day
lockdown came directly from Prime Minis-
ter Narendra Modi in an 8pm speech, Paki-
stan’s de factoban was enacted haphazardly
at the provincial level, and then grudgingly
acknowledged by Mr Khan.
The details of the restrictions differ, too.
India’s are strict and no-nonsense. Multi-
ple videos have captured police thwacking
anyone they catch on the roads, including
doctors trying to reach hospitals, delivery
men and people looking for food. The ban
includes all religious services, of any faith.
Pakistan is wary of going so far. Although it
has nearly twice as many covid-19 cases as
India, and despite glaring evidence that the
return of Shia pilgrims from Iran, as well as
a jamboree that brought tens of thousands
of Sunni missionaries to Lahore, were big
sources of infection, the government has
merely urged imams to discourage com-
munal services and to suggest that the
faithful pray at home instead.
Yet for all the differences, the reasoning
behind the unco-ordinated drive to lock
down a fifth of humanity is shared. In mid-
March, as the number of cases in both India
and Pakistan began to rise into the hun-
dreds, the inadequacy of both countries’
medical infrastructure stood alarmingly
exposed. China, for instance, can muster 18
doctors and 42 hospital beds per 10,000
people, according to the World Health Or-
ganisation. India has just eight doctors and
seven hospital beds for the same number of
people, and Pakistan ten doctors and six
hospital beds. India has at most 40,000 or
so working ventilators, equipment that has
proved life-saving for the most severely af-
fected covid-19 patients. In contrast Ameri-ca, with a quarter as many people, has four
times as many functioning ones. Pakistan
has only 2,200 ventilators and these are
poorly distributed: the 12m people of Balo-
chistan make do with 49 machines, fewer
than a single hospital in Lahore.
Simply put, both countries needed to
put a stop to the spread of the disease by
any means possible, or risk being swamped
by dying patients. Curfews and lockdowns,
backed by police muscle and softened by
government handouts, as well as by calls to
patriotism, are the cheaper option. The In-
dian Council of Medical Research, the gov-
ernment body that has led India’s effort, es-
timates that strict social distancing may
reduce the total number of expected cases
by 62%. More crucially for India’s health
system, it would reduce the peak number
of sick people by nearly 90%.Rewarding idleness
This will not come cheap. Mr Khan on
March 24th announced a 1trn rupee ($7bn)
support package, cutting fuel prices and
earmarking money for the poor. Mr Modi is
spending $23bn to provide free food and
cash transfers to India’s poorest. He is also
boosting funding for health care and sup-
port for farmers. State governments in In-
dia have been more generous still, with
some paying pensions in advance and oth-
ers paying a month’s wage to all migrant
construction workers. Such fillips are vital,
say economists. The lockdown has broughtmost factories to a standstill, including the
entire car industry.
But the pain is felt hardest in the infor-
mal sector, which accounts for over 70% of
the workforce in both countries. For the
middle class in both India and Pakistan,
the lockdowns have meant nothing worse
than claustrophobia and doing without
servants. For the poor they are devastating:
within hours of the closure thousands of
homeless had collected outside free kitch-
ens in Delhi, India’s capital, not knowing
where else to go.
Mr Khan has expressed anguish for the
poor and Mr Modi has repeatedly asked
employers to be kind to workers, as well as
suggesting that each wealthy family take
care of nine less fortunate ones during the
21-day lockdown. He even asked citizens to
look after stray animals that are no longer
being fed. Yet many Indians question why,
despite such shows of sympathy, the prime
minister neglected to say that groceries
and pharmacies would remain open. The
predictable result was a mad rush to stock
up on food. Although understandable as a
means to curb the epidemic, the prime
minister’s decision not to give migrant
workers time to return to their home vil-
lages sowed further chaos and misery as
hundreds of thousands of poor labourers
with nowhere else to go struggled to cross
the country despite the closure of air, rail
and bus services. Thousands have ended
up walking long distances. Pakistan has
seen a similar flight to villages, with im-
poverished workers caught riding in am-
bulances and in the cargo holds of buses to
escape the travel ban. In India as many as
500,000 truck drivers were also stranded
with their vehicles, blocked from crossing
state boundaries, says a research group.
Ironically, the stalled deliveries have in-
cluded vital medical supplies, such as parts
for ventilators.^7DELHI
Governments in the subcontinent try to keep a fifth of humanity at homeCovid-19 in South AsiaHand-to-mouth to lockdown
Counting on the power of prayer in Pakistan