• Welcome to Tamil Brahmins forums.

    You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our Free Brahmin Community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today!

    If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact contact us.

Raghuram Rajan explains why Covid 2nd wave took India by surprise

prasad1

Active member
The second Covid-19 wave in India has proved far deadlier than the first wave as cases and deaths continue to increase at an unprecedented pace. On Tuesday, India reported over 3.5 lakh cases and over 3,400 deaths.

The country has been reporting over 3 lakh daily cases for 13 straight days. In comparison, India had not reported even 1 lakh daily cases during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020.

A shortage of key healthcare equipment, medical oxygen, hospital beds and drugs have made the situation worse during the second wave and experts are worried about the ongoing Covid-19 crisis in the country.

‘COMPLACENCY, LACK OF LEADERSHIP’

Raghuram Rajan said the overwhelming surge of Covid-19 cases has revealed complacency among authorities after the first Covid-19 wave in 2020. The former RBI governor also highlighted “lack of leadership and foresight” as key factors that have hurt India during the second wave.

“If you were careful if you were cautious, you had to recognize that it wasn’t done yet,” Rajan was quoted as saying in a Bloomberg interview.

“Anybody paying attention to what was happening in the rest of the world, in Brazil, for example, should have recognized the virus does come back and potentially in more virulent forms,” Rajan added.

It may be noted that many Indian government officials had earlier announced that the country emerged victorious in the fight against the novel coronavirus. However, cases in India started rising again from March and accelerated in April.

At the moment, India is suffering the world’s worst outbreak of Covid-19 as deaths remain over the 3,400-mark. Many industry bodies and medical experts have called for a nationwide lockdown for a few weeks in the wake of the ongoing crisis.

While the government has decided not to impose a lockdown citing last year’s economic devastation, many experts suggest that the Covid-19 situation could spiral out of control if concrete measures are not taken swiftly.

“There was a sense that we had endured the worst the virus could give us, and we had come through, and it was time to open up, and that complacency hurt us,” said Rajan, who is now a professor of finance at the University of Chicago.

Another factor that Rajan pointed out that the slow rate of vaccination in India has also made the second wave worse. “Some of that may be the sense that we had time. That since we had dealt with the virus we could roll out the vaccination slowly,” he said.

 

Latest ads

Back
Top