How India Plans to Lock Down 1.3 Billion People in a Democracy
- Some say PM Modi’s move is ‘bold’, others say it is risky
- Experts fear India’s infections may increase dramatically
Pedestrians walk along near-empty roads during a lockdown in Mumbai, India, on March 25.
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
It’s something that has never been tried before: 1.3 billion people -- a fifth of the globe’s population -- locked down in one place for 21 straight days.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered the unprecedented move this week in a bid to replicate China’s relative success containing the coronavirus outbreak. But he faces perhaps more obstacles than his neighbor President Xi Jinping, who leveraged the Communist Party’s centralized control to isolate some 60 million people in the province of Hubei, where Covid-19 first emerged.