Data Analysis and Visualization
BEYOND CASE NUMBERS
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A data-based report on how India’s past and present will determine her post-COVID-19 future
This data story is written in collaboration with Sai Krishna Dammalapati, a Data Journalist based in Hyderabad.
The way Japan recovered from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear disaster is described as the Japanese economic miracle. Today, India needs a similar miracle to recover from the biological disaster she is facing in the form of COVID-19. But, what makes a miracle?
The Japanese miracle was not a ‘miracle’ in the literal sense. Apart from the post-war economic reforms, the strong socio-economic foundations — literacy rates, human capital, etc — were the key factors of Japan’s recovery. Similarly, the survival and recovery from the current crisis will also depend on India’s socio-economic conditions and reforms being taken to improve them.
India’s past and present will determine her post-COVID-19 future.
COVID-19 in India
The first COVID-19 case got registered in an Indian student from Wuhan University on January 30th in Kerala’s Thrissur district. Later on, two other similar cases were registered in Kerala itself. The state government took early action by declaring a State Emergency on February 3rd. Kerala was successful in containing the virus initially and hence no other case was reported in India in February.
It is since the 2nd of March that India started registering cases every day, primarily from international travelers. In response to this, the National government started to restrict international flights and subsequently imposed a nationwide lockdown restricting domestic flights in addition to international travel.
The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) measured the policy stringency of various countries. India’s lockdown is one of the stringent containment actions taken world-wide and it was given the maximum policy stringency score of 100. Figure-1 explains the Indian government’s lockdown with the help of data on flight mobility.
