The nationwide lockdown that India implemented at the end of March was meant to flatten the Coronavirus curve. But according to the Managing Director of Bajaj Auto, Rajiv Bajaj, the move ended up flattening a very different curve – the GDP curve.
As the wrong curve has been flattened, India came to suffer the worst of both worlds, Bajaj said this in a conversation with Rahul Gandhi. The conversation is a part of a series where the former Congress President talks to experts on the pandemic’s impact on the nation.
Bajaj said instead of looking up to Japan and South Korea, India tried to emulate the US and Europe, which was a wrong benchmark for an Asian country like India.
Bajaj summed up the situation saying, “There were various forms of lockdowns we could have opted for, but we chose a hard lockdown that was porous, because of which the virus situation here is still persisting.”
A full locked-down week made matters worse for an already sputtering quarter because of which GDP in Q4 hit an 11-year trough.
Businesses were already misfiring well before the nationwide lockdown was imposed on March 25.
