Rajiv Bajaj and Gautam Adani clearly don't agree about the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown. Where do you stand?
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00:00You have definitely decimated the economy.
00:04You flattened the wrong curve.
00:06You know, it's not the infection curve, it's the GDP curve.
00:10This is what we have ended with, the worst of both worlds.
00:30I liked your point about, we look to the West and not
00:59East.
01:00Why do you think we looked West?
01:02I think, unfortunately, India not only looked West, it went to the Wild West, I think, in
01:10the sense, we stayed more towards the impervious side.
01:14We tried to implement a hard lockdown, but which was still porous.
01:19So I think we have ended up with the worst of both worlds.
01:22On the one hand, a porous lockdown makes sure that the virus will still exist.
01:29And as you said, it is still waiting to hit you when you unlock.
01:34So you have not solved that problem.
01:36But you have definitely decimated the economy.
01:39You flattened the wrong curve.
01:42You know, it's not the infection curve, it's the GDP curve.
01:45This is what we have ended with, the worst of both worlds.
01:48In my view, what should have been done is something more right of center, which is the
01:53kind of stuff that we are hearing out of Japan and Sweden.
01:57And people, when they hear about this in terms of being articulated as herd immunity,
02:02tend to think that herd immunity means, you know, let the vulnerable die.
02:07It doesn't mean that at all.
02:08They're missing the details that whether it's in terms of sanitization, masks, distancing,
02:13Sweden, Japan, etc., are following all these practices.
02:18But they're not trying to go further into the unproductive zone, as you said, and make
02:24something that is relatively benign and manageable appear to be fatal and beyond control.