Tweak Sweden’s Model and Partially Roll-Back Lockdown in India

One question Prime Minister Narendra Modi must have asked his Swedish counterpart, Stefan Lofven, during their telephone conversation of April 7, was: why is Sweden, unlike most of Europe, not under lockdown? Lofven’s reply could have been one more input for Modi to consider before he decides whether to continue with the lockdown of India beyond next week, or roll it back, at least, partially.

Sweden is an outlier in Europe, where most nations have retreated indoors as the novel coronavirus has already claimed over 50,000 lives. Life in Sweden continues as before—schools and offices are open, as are malls, restaurants and bars, and public transport continues to function as it always did.

Covid-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, is very much on the prowl in Sweden. On 9 April morning India time, Sweden had clocked 8,419 coronavirus cases and 687 deaths; a day before, 726 people had tested positive for the deadly virus.

India’s tally on 9 April was 5,916 coronavirus cases and 178 deaths; 565 new cases were reported the previous day. On the face of it, there is not a significant difference between India and Sweden on the coronavirus meter.

Every country has its own specific circumstances to take into account before fashioning its strategy to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. For instance, the Modi government could have vigorously monitored people flying into India from February. Or it could have emulated South Korea, which flattened the coronavirus curve by intensely testing people for the virus and isolating them. South Korea did not go under lockdown.

India’s belated attempt to combat the coronavirus is why it is vital to comprehend Sweden’s refusal to opt for lockdown. It might have Modi to rethink and change tack.

Prime Minister Lofven, in his TV address to the nation on 22 March, said he was aware of the concern among Swedes in these days darkled by the coronavirus; and that he knew they were “worried for themselves, for their loved ones at risk, or for their jobs.” Yet Lofven also said that, in his eyes, the country’s economy was just as important as the health of its citizens, and requested Swedes to favour local businesses.

Lofven’s strategy is said to have been influenced by Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s Chief Epidemiologist, who thinks it is impossible to figure out which strategy works best to tackle the virus. From Sweden’s perspective, a lockdown could paralyse economy, depress incomes, and increase unemployment. The Swedish state would be depleted of resources precisely at the time it is needed most to undertake social measures.

Sweden recommends a more relaxed approach to combating the coronavirus: Watch the graph and judge whether the lockdown could arrest its sharp rise. Sweden believes it has not reached there yet. It should not, therefore, expose itself to the severity of economic paralysis.

Swedes are mostly said to be in agreement with Lofven and Tegnell, although some 2,000 Swedish luminaries recently wrote a letter saying Sweden was losing precious time in checking the coronavirus. One expert even said Sweden is playing “Russian roulette” with its population.

On the other side of fence is Swedish economist Fredrik Erixon, who wrote, “Our approach to fighting the pandemic starts from something more fundamental: in a liberal democracy you have to convince and not command people into action. If you lose that principle, you will lose your soul… Perhaps Tegnell and his team will turn out to be wrong…. But their point is that the people deserve policies that work for longer than a month.”

Does India have a strategy beyond a month or two weeks?

Lofven is a centre-left politician, yet the arguments underlying his strategy have been appropriated by right-wing commentators in the United Kingdom to demand a rollback of the lockdown there, even as the death toll in that country mounts, as Polly Toynbee wrote in The Guardian. Toynbee said right-wing commentators had not cared until now that “poverty kills”, but they now want the economy to function to protect their money.

Toynbee’s piece was provocatively headlined: Your Money or Your Life?

In India, the debate over the lockdown should be titled: Our Safety or Their Life.

Should India decide to extend the lockdown, the poor are likely to be rendered so vulnerable that we might eventually face a tragedy as mammoth as what Covid-19 can possibly inflict. The difference between India and Sweden is as enormous as the distance separating them. Sweden’s per capita GDP is $53,209, India’s $7,763. Sweden is in the category of high income countries, India in the low middle income group. Sweden’s population density is 25 people per square kilometre; India’s is 464 people per square kilometre. Over half of Swedish households consist of just one person, the highest number of single-person households in the world.

Tweak the Swedish model and apply it to India.

The rationale underlying India’s lockdown is to create social distance among people to check the coronavirus from spreading. Yet it seems a cruel joke on those who live in slums. In the Dalit Ekta Camp, a Vasant Kunj slum, which I have visited in the past, has an upward of four people sharing a room or two. The passage separating two rows of tenements is not even six feet, recommended as the distance one human being should maintain from the other. Social distancing is an illusionary concept in rural India.

From their perspective, the lockdown has been imposed to banish them from the cocoon of the middle class. This has been undoubtedly achieved at the expense of their livelihood. The government’s supply of free food ration mitigates their problem of hunger, but it will not save them from hurtling down the economic curve.

Their meagre cash reserves, for instance, will get exhausted, increasing their vulnerability to exploitation. Appu Esthose Suresh, of the London School of Economics, has calculated that the “poorest 500 million [50 crore] Indians would be out of cash reserves completely by April 15 and another 500 million will be left with just half their reserves.”

Should India continue with lockdown for another two or three weeks, nearly a billion people out of India’s population of 1.3 billion will likely have no cash with them. They will likely take loans from the market at usurious rates, and will enter into a debt trap. Their ability to negotiate wages in the future will diminish, and their rights will be quashed. India’s infamous inequality will sharpen and widen.

Suresh writes, “Given the dire economic situation, what I would like to propose is this: a social and economic argument to remonetise India. This would mean a direct cash transfer of Rs 2.5-lakh crore just to replenish people’s exhausted cash coffers.”

But this has certainly not happened, evident from the Union government’s relief package of just Rs 1.7 lakh crore, which includes expenses incurred on food ration and free gas supply. Not only does the package fail to protect the liquidity of the poor, it is ridden with the problems of exclusion of beneficiaries who will be left to fend for themselves, as Vignesh Karthik KR and Saumya Gupta argue. Their piece shows that the rural households were spending Rs 6,646 on their monthly expenditure. At least this amount of money needs to be transferred to them to protect their cash reserves. A higher amount will need to be paid to their counterparts in urban India.

The coronavirus, obviously, does not distinguish between the rich and poor as it preys upon people. Yet unless India can protect the cash reserves of the poor, it must reconsider the strategy of lockdown to combat Covid-19. No or little money with people implies that even when the economy is kick-started, the demand for goods will remain sluggish.

India does not have to necessarily choose between “our life” and “our money.” Until 6 April, the virus was confined to 284 out of India’s 728 districts. India can impose a strict lockdown on all these 284 districts, disallowing people to exit them—and allowing people to enter them without the right to leave of their own volition. The lockdown should be rolled back in the remaining 444 districts, which could resume their normal economic activities. India will have otherwise chosen to safeguard the Indian middle class at the expense of the marginal.

The author is a freelance journalist. The views are personal.