More than 1 billion people in “total lockdown” in India after coronavirus cases spike – “To save India, to save its every citizen, you, your family, every street, every neighborhood is being put under lockdown”
25 March 2020 (BBC News) – India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has imposed a nationwide lockdown in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
The restrictions came into force at midnight local time (18:30 GMT) and will be enforced for 21 days.
“There will be a total ban on venturing out of your homes,” Mr Modi said in a televised address.
He appealed for people not to panic – but crowds quickly mobbed stores in the capital, Delhi, and other cities.
Correspondents say it is not clear how – or even if – people will now be allowed out to buy food and other essentials. […]
“The entire country will be in lockdown, total lockdown,” Mr Modi said on Tuesday.
He added: “To save India, to save its every citizen, you, your family … every street, every neighbourhood is being put under lockdown.”
Mr Modi warned that if India does not “handle these 21 days well, then our country… will go backwards by 21 years”. [more]
Coronavirus: India enters ‘total lockdown’ after spike in cases
India, Day 1: World’s largest lockdown begins
By Suhasini Raj, Hari Kumar, Jeffrey Gettleman, and Kai Schultz
25 March 2020
NEW DELHI (The New York Times) – In one state, police officers have staked out roads and highways, stopping any passing motorists and demanding to know why they were outside their homes. In another, doctors have been run out of their homes, shunned as carriers of the coronavirus.
Across India, crowds swarmed into food stores and cleaned out the shelves. At a fancy market in New Delhi, one man stuffed his Mercedes with groceries on Wednesday afternoon and then jumped behind the wheel and zoomed off — wearing blue rubber dishwashing gloves and a clear plastic face mask that looked like it fit with a snorkel.
This is Day 1 of how India is coping with the world’s biggest coronavirus lockdown, 1.3 billion people — nearly a fifth of humanity — ordered to stay inside unless vitally necessary.
India has reported relatively few coronavirus cases — fewer than 600 so far — but with the population density so high and the public health system so weak, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has imposed stringent measures to keep India from sliding into the disaster that the United States, Italy and other countries face.
On Tuesday night, Mr. Modi ordered more than a billion people to stay indoors. And on Wednesday, Indians, from the snowbound valleys in the Himalayas to tropical islands in the Andaman Sea, mostly seemed to be following the rules — though the price for some will prove high.
Many Indians live on a very short and tentative cash flow. Rickshaw drivers, for example, buy food for their families with the money they make that day. Rickshaws have been banned from the roads, and many drivers don’t know how they are going to survive. […]
Mr. Modi said the lockdown would last 21 days. Some health experts think that will not be enough and that Mr. Modi will extend it. But in Kolkata, a large city in eastern India that is a stronghold of the political opposition to Mr. Modi, many people were hoping the lockdown would wrap up even quicker. [more]
