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While India had the world’s harshest lockdown, Pakistan barely had one at all. Indian economist Kaushik Basu proposed a theory where India’s lockdown “itself became the source of the virus’s spread”. “By having people huddle together, infecting one another, and then having the same people travel hundreds of miles, the pandemic has been made much worse than it need have been,” wrote Basu. Calling it a “lockdown-and-scatter” policy, Basu argues that “some 4 or 5% of India’s population were literally sent off like sprinklers across the nation”. The fact that India’s lockdown saw cases surge – rather than drop – as well the spread of the pandemic into rural India tend to back up Basu’s point.

With respect to total cases per million population, India is 1.6 times Bangladesh and 2.3 times Pakistan. In comparison to Sri Lanka – which has had remarkable success in controlling the disease – India’s cases per million population is as high as 21.5 times. Matters remain much the same with deaths per million of population. India’s is nearly twice that of Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Even starker: cases in Bangladesh and Pakistan are on the downturn, while they are still rising rapidly in India. In mid-June, for example, Pakistan hit nearly 7,000 new cases a day. That has crashed to 330 for September 8. In the same period, however, India shot up by 9 times, going from around 10,000 new cases a day in mid-June to nearly 90,000 new cases on September 8 –the highest in the world.                                                                                
India’s neighbour Pakistan has been quite successful in containing COVID-19 Pandemic, so far. 

Yesterday Pakistan had only 196 new cases. India on the other hand become a global worry, with a new world record of 96760 new cases yesterday. While Modi government undeservedly pats its back for having achieved a COVID recovery rate of  77%. In fairness, the government cannot take any credit for recovery rate because there is no treatment for the disease. The recovery is primarily based on general immunity of the patients. In any case, 77% recovery rate in India pales in the light of the recovery rate attained by Pakistan, which is 96 %.