Modi is right to prepare India for a deeper crisis, writes Barkha Dutt

There are no two ways about it: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is preparing us for the worst, while obviously trying to avoid panic.

Listening to his address to the nation on Thursday, I was grateful for one thing. There was no attempt to play down the gravity of what the coronavirus could mean for India. This was in stark contrast to the army of his followers online who think it’s a political and personal affront to even suggest that India could be on the precipice of a coronavirus tumble. Apparently, if you ask why we are not testing more aggressively (at last count, of 14,376 tests, less than 900 are random tests done on those with respiratory disorders; all other tests have been confined to those who have returned from abroad or come into contact with someone who has the virus), you are a fear-monger or, worse, a traitor.

It took the PM to set the record straight. Though he didn’t get into numbers and specifics — and I do wish he had— he was unequivocal: Anyone who thinks the worst has already unfolded is being delusional. On the contrary, Modi was using the grammar and rallying spirit of wartime, down to the analogies with blackout sirens from a previous era and the call for visible national bonding on Sunday evening. You can choose to be cynical, as some did, about clanging your thali (plate) from your balcony or doorstep — personally, I’m fully in support for some collective sentimentalism in the age of social distancing — but the debate over the thali is needless and is missing the larger takeaway. The Modi government is taking us through a rehearsal of a people’s curfew on Sunday, as part of preparing us for wartime hunkering down. And frankly, the battle against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) is precisely that grave; it needs modern, scientific warfare and mobilisation. It must be said. Modi struck the right note.

The government, is, in fact, nudging us incrementally in the direction of a longer, more formalised set of restrictions and shutdowns. The building blocks for this inevitability are already in place — the advisory for those above 65 years and below 10 years to stay at home, the suspension of board examinations, prohibitory orders in cities, the shutdown of gyms, the appeal for one-arm distancing on public transport — we are probably days away from a much bigger shutters down on life as we know it. The “janta curfew” (people’s curfew) is for us to get used to the idea, and for us to feel like it’s voluntary, in national service, and not the consequence of an enforced diktat. In terms of handling the psychology of more than a billion people, this is an astute approach. So when supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) shout down all those asking for an aggressive ramping up of testing, they are doing the PM a disservice. When they congratulate the government for already winning the war against the coronavirus, they are undermining the urgency Modi has invoked.

HT