Modi seeks ‘forgiveness’ from India’s poor over coronavirus lockdown

Mumbai

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the nation’s poor for forgiveness yesterday, as the economic and human toll from his 21-day nationwide lockdown deepens and criticism mounts about a lack of adequate planning ahead of the decision.

Modi announced a three week-lockdown on Tuesday to curb the spread of coronavirus. But the decision has stung millions of India’s poor, leaving many hungry and forcing jobless migrant labourers to flee cities and walk hundreds of kilometres to their native villages.

“I would firstly like to seek forgiveness from all my countrymen,” Modi said in a nationwide radio address. The poor “would definitely be thinking what kind of prime minister is this, who has put us into so much trouble,” he said, urging people to understand there was no other option.

“Steps taken so far… will give India victory over corona,” he added. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in India rose to 979 on Sunday, with 25 deaths. The government announced a $22.6 billion economic stimulus plan on Thursday to provide direct cash transfers and food handouts to India’s poor.

In an opinion piece published yesterday, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo - two of the three winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019 - said even more aid for the poor is needed. “Without that, the demand crisis will snowball into an economic avalanche, and people will have no choice but to defy orders,” they wrote in the Indian Express.