Lockdown or Economic Destruction?

The book discusses the pros and cons of the nationwide lockdown announced by Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, on 24 March 2020 to curb the spread of Coronavirus. It is a candid but balanced analysis of the lockdown on the economy at both the micro and macro levels. It studies the circumstances under which the lockdown was imposed and the consequences of this decision on the socio-economic horizon of India. It tries to analyse the justification of the lockdown for a country with eighty percent of its population dependent on government welfare schemes for survival.
The book looks at various economic facets that were distorted due to the lockdown and also does some crystal ball gazing of what the future will look with this new experience of working from home amid panic and fear as no one knows if the pandemic will return even if it seems to end. It includes twenty-one chapters, divided into four sections with two initial chapters. The standalone chapters in each section directly lay before the reader the issue and provide the commonly held view and then attempts to provide the counterview supported by facts. The book starts with a Prologue describing the way people in India look at the lockdown and the epidemic months after the economy was subjected to a panic exercise. The other chapters talk on various issues which came up during the lockdown and the unlocking process which caused considerable damage to the economy and more importantly to the morale of the common people.
As the virus will never be behind us and that we have to learn to live with the same, the question is whether the government will respond in a different way with each new wave.