reat Depression of the 1930s and World War II. Not surprisingly, Indian policymakers simultaneously faced many challenges—the need to manage the health impact of covid, the economic impact of a prolonged lockdown and the second-order impact of a stuttering global economy.
This article attempts to lay out the basic intellectual framework of India’s policy response so that readers understand why certain measures and trade-offs were made, and also get a sense of future policies.The single biggest issue faced by policymakers was the sheer uncertainty of a rapidly evolving situation.
Around mid-March, when the pandemic started spreading rapidly outside China, the nature of the disease was still not understood.