I agree with everything Ruchir Sharma writes in this op-ed. But I still think it's only part of the lockdown story. 1/n https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/opinion/sunday/india-coronavirus-lockdown-inequality.html

Not having severe restrictions to enforce social distancing in India would have meant a rapid increase in Covid cases, and that would also hurt the poor. If India had taken that policy route, today we would be accusing the elites of taking up all the hospital resources. 2/n

Instead of news stories on economic suffering, newspapers would have been full of stories of how poor were denied hospital entry, beds, and how the elites cornered the ventilators for themselves. 3/n

India's elite problem is not caused by the lockdown (and Ruchir Sharma is not saying it is), but the elites benefiting from the lockdown and the poor struggling is just the reality of India, irrespective of the lockdown. 4/n

During demonetization it was a similar story. The rich switched to digital and electronic payments, and used their money laundering networks to hide black money, and the poor died waiting in ATM lines. 5/n

I am no fan of the Modi government lockdown. Mainly because it should have been used as a means, perhaps for a week or two, to prepare to test, trace, and treat Covid on a war footing. And ten weeks later India is not testing or treating Covid any better than early March. 6/n

But think of a counterfactual to the lockdown. I can easily imagine a NYT oped, accusing Indian elites of copying Sweden without taking into account the Indian context, and placing hundreds of millions of poor people, living in slums, unable to social distance, in jeopardy. 7/n

That op-ed would have had the same argument with different facts. It would have quoted data on how India has the lowest beds, hospitals, doctors, per capita of the BRICS countries. How co-morbidities because of exposure to air pollution increased the fatality rate. And so on. 8/n

And once again, elites would have behaved abominably. They would have used their money and influence to use all the health infrastructure, leaving the poor to die. 9/n

My point is, the focus on supporting or criticizing the lockdown is not helpful. It was supposed to be the means to an end - to increase healthcare capacity swiftly. But wishing there were no restrictions is denying the reality of India's crumbling health infrastructure. 10/n

So the problem ultimately is lack of state capacity. Lack of state capacity means the govt cannot provide public health capacity, or enforce a lockdown properly, or provide relief and income support during a lockdown, or get migrants home, or test at a large scale and so on. 11/n