Lockdown stringency in India rises, among strictest in the world now

Lockdown Delhi (Image: AFP)

Before daily COVID-19 cases started tapering earlier this week, there were multiple calls for a national lockdown to contain the lockdown. This was despite states starting to impose strict curbs starting in April.

How do these curbs compare to the national lockdown of a year ago?

One way of gauging that is to look at the Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker which measures the strictness of a government’s policy responses towards COVID-19 based on a Stringency Index that calculates the mean score of nine policy measures (such school closures, workplace closures, stay-at home requirements and travel bans), each taking a value between 0 and 100.

A higher score indicates a stricter government response with 100 being the strictest on the scale.

As the chart below shows, India’s stringency levels have climbed from the lows of March 2021, but still a far cry from the levels seen in April last year when it was the strictest lockdown in the world. The current number suggests the same level of restrictions seen around September 2020.

Among countries that report the most active cases in the world, stringency levels in India are the highest as on May 17.  Currently, the US has 5.9 million active cases (about 36 percent of the global total), followed by India (3.2 million or 20 percent), Brazil (1 million), France (608,821) and Iran (443,837).

India is just behind countries such as Venezuela, Sri Lanka, Argentina and Bangladesh in terms of the stringency of the lockdowns.

The present scenario looks similar to the national lockdown imposed last year, but with some key differences, said an Oxford Economics research report released on May 17. There are fewer restrictions on manufacturing, retail and transport indicating that the 2021 measures are less stringent, the report noted.

“The proportion of states and union territories in lockdown has increased, accounting for more than 65 percent of national GDP in May from around 22 percent in April. Including partial lockdowns, we estimate that nearly 80 percent of the economy is now subject to substantially tighter Covid restrictions compared to March,” the report said.

With states adopting stern measures to contain the spread with restrictions on movement in public spaces, daily new cases reported are now showing a receding trend over the past few days.

To be sure, the Oxford tracker itself cautions that the stringency of a lockdown shouldn’t be equated to its effectiveness.

However, “the strategy seems to be working, with the rate of infections beginning to flatten at the national level, led by declining cases in Maharashtra, Delhi, and other regions that announced lockdowns relatively early on,” the Oxford Economics report said.

Google’s mobility data indicates trends moving towards the levels observed last year.

While the lockdowns may have helped reduce the cases, how do they affect the economy? Economic activity indicators are already reflecting the restrictions in mobility, as our tracker shows.

Yet, analysts don’t expect the impact to be as severe as the last time.

“Lockdowns are more nuanced this time and consumers and businesses have adapted, a view supported by international evidence,” said Nomura Research in a note. “Stronger global growth is also currently a tailwind, which was not the case last year. We expect lockdowns to last for around six weeks and be followed by selective reopening in June, which should result in better sequential growth.”