During the coronavirus pandemic, the average citizen has started learning about clinical trials of vaccines and drugs, where medicines are administered to two groups. The differential response between the groups shows how effective these medicines are. But there is another, more natural experiment also being conducted that measures the effectiveness of our political institutions and leadership in the presence of an external shock.
India and Pakistan both had their first cases of Covid-19 within a month of each other, and also are roughly in similar stages of development, have similar levels of healthcare expenditure relative to GDP and have similar weather. Could the difference in health and economic outcomes of the two countries point to whose political institutions and leadership have dealt better with this crisis, and be a report card of our nation’s performance?
We compare India and Pakistan on four metrics: Timeliness of first response, healthcare outcomes, economic outcomes, and domestic perception.
Timeliness of first response
India faster on travel bans, Pakistan dithered on lockdown
The first case of Covid-19 in Pakistan was reported on 26 February 2020 , wherein a student, who returned from Iran, tested positive in Karachi. This was within a month after India had its first case in Kerala on 30 January 2020. While India was quick to issue travel bans, including one for China in early February, and initiated a quick lockdown to contain the spread of the virus in March, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan was against it and in fact, in his nationally televised address, downplayed Covid-19’s danger stating it only affects the old and most cases resolve through self-quarantine, encouraging people to return to work.
Pakistan did not have a travel ban on China, and Iran (another Covid-19 hotspot) till at least late March possibly as a ‘show of solidarity’ with its all-weather ally, China. Imran Khan dithered on the question of imposing a nationwide lockdown, and the army stepped in and forced the shutdown, between 21 and 24 March for different provinces, roughly around the same time as India.
Also read: Pakistan’s Imran govt is focussed on controlling pandemic now. Human rights can wait
Healthcare outcomes
India has 1/3rd the cases and ½ deaths per capita as Pakistan, but has conducted fewer tests
As of 2 May, Pakistan has tested more than India per capita, having conducted nearly 193,859 tests for it’s 212 million population whereas India has conducted nearly 1 million tests for in a population of 1.35 billion. While India has to improve on this metric, it’s cases per capita are a third, and death per capita half of Pakistan’s. This is possibly due to India’s faster response.
Economic outcomes
Pakistan has initiated a larger stimulus, but its growth is expected to be more impacted
Pakistan, despite having less fiscal space than India, has initiated a larger economic stimulus than India, relative to GDP. It has announced a stimulus package of US$ 8 billion, amounting to about 2.5 per cent of GDP, compared to a stimulus package of US$ 22.6 billion announced by India, amounting to about 0.8 per cent of GDP. GDP is expected to fall harder for Pakistan in 2020 with a contraction of 1.5 per cent according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), albeit from 3.3 per cent growth in 2019. India is expected to grow 1.9 per cent in 2020 according to the IMF, from a higher 5 per cent growth rate in the previous year.
Also read: Is Pakistan taking advantage of global Covid crisis to turn on terror tap against India?
Domestic perception
Both India and Pakistan have extremely high approval of government response to coronavirus
Overall, India’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been much faster, and we have had a third of Pakistan’s cases and half their deaths, our economy is expected to have a smaller impact, and our people’s opinion of the government’s response is better.
India’s civilian government has had a much more cohesive response, whereas Pakistan’s military had to overrule its prime minister.
In this natural experiment, India’s political institutions and its leadership have clearly come out ahead. But there are still lessons for us to learn because success in our current crisis cannot be defined as an India versus Pakistan contest, with India coming out ahead. Our struggle against the Covid-19 crisis is a united one, of India and Pakistan, and of all humanity together.
Even in our relative victory, we must test more and have a larger stimulus to help Indians overcome the hardship of the lockdown. If Pakistan can do it, why can’t we?
Akshay Shah is a graduate of Columbia University, and is a Schwarzman Scholar from Tsinghua University. Dr Namit Choksi is a physician serving on the frontlines to battle COVID-19 in Maharashtra, and has a Masters in Public Health from Harvard University, and is a Schwarzman Scholar from Tsinghua University. Views are personal.
Pakistan has set an example and India needs to follow Pakistan’s foot steps. Pakistan had repeated lockdown as soon as their cases began to increase and they even had smart lockdown in area with most cases. India on the other hand keeps staring at Pakistan’s every move and the jealousy has caused downfall in their own citizen’s lives. “Wadashi haath” is not responsible for the extreme racism, child rapes and coronavirus cases in India. Indians and Indian media needs to control their stupid rivalry with Pakistan and focus on their issues created from their own neglect. From Kashmiri Muslims to all Indian Muslims now are getting tortured and killed by fellow Hindu Indians and this is not because of Pakistan. Indians lives won’t change until they accept their own mistakes and fix them without the cowardly name blame game.
In Pakistan low count of corona patients is quite clear. Hospitals are closing there corona wards due to the absence of patients. It is a fact and you cant deny it. But what is the reason? Its the real question. If India finds the answer , it will be better for her own. In my view main reasons are……
Well in time start of lockdown
Large portion of young population,
Smart lock down technique,
Better health level of Pakistani people
Better Natural immunity (Muslims normally
Has good higenic habbits wadu, miswak and gusul are obligatory in Islam & they also use cow meat very often and statistics show corona harm much less the Muslim population all over the world) ,
Continuous vaccination programs like polio, BCG and other vaccines
And element of herd immunity
And may be some unknown factirs are also there.
Well balanced article. I think this is the time both countries join hands to battle a common enemy.
Print..ohh
Once again..
Comparing Pakistan which in actual hiding data to india who is following every norms in providing data is simple illogical as well as hilarious
22 Billion Please correct your calculation Indian GDP is 2+ trillion & 10% of it is aprox 200 billion.
And if you calculate 20 lakh crore rupees is 270 billion
So please correct your data.
Approx 7700 crore rupees is 1 Billion dollar.
Correct me If I’m wrong
Such a childish writing. Not worth even commenting. Its stupidity to calculate India test per million, More than half of India’s district did not have case, den how come u count in terms if entire population. Its quite obvious, with India’s total population, no. of test will always look less.
Very apt reply.
I read Indian websites (because I’m open minded), and all I see is doom and gloom about Pakistan. Then I see things around me in Pakistan, and I laugh at the quality of Indian journalism, at least wrt reporting on Pakistan.
Things are not ideal in Pakistan, but it’s not half as bad as your media outlets (Pak bashing sells, I know) would have you believe. Peace out.
This is because your expectations are low from your country. Casualty hiding is old game in Pakistan whether it is of military or civilian
This is because your expectations are low from your country. Casualty hiding is old game in Pakistan whether it is of military or civilian.
No one in India cares whatever happens to Pakis. What India is to West, Pakistan is to India. It gives us a glimpse on how bad things can be. That’s the only optics. Just like when western media highlights only negative news from India because they want poverty porn. Similarly, Indians see Pakistan in similar light w.r.t to us.
Yeah, it’s nice to hear that a Pakistani is saying that he’s open-minded. I know that indian journalism is not good, because our media is bought by various parties and vo log sabko political issues pe bhadkate hain. But it doesn’t mean that your media is not bad;
It IS half as bad as India, as I always see Pakistan’s media lines boasting about their country’s power, they keep saying that we’re a nuclear country and all whenever a hot topic rises between India and Pakistan. Its of course a bit better than us cuz all the media lines ACTUALLY unite and speak up on a matter collectively, but they boast too much.
Btw, you’re one of the only Pakistanis I whose opinions I support
Jimmy, its a wonder why many Hindus along with Muslims opposed and protested against CAA when it targeted Muslims? Why do we show solidarity when minorities are oppressed?
Even we didn’t know that we were supposed to be masters in a secular country and were given higher rights than minorities. Its a wonder why many Hindus along with Muslims opposed and protested against CAA when it targeted Muslims? Why do we show solidarity when minorities are oppressed regardless of religion or caste?
Perhaps we should also open our backsides like Pakistan and let your version of “Truth” and “Rights” reign over minorities.
Wise words oh great and free man named Jimmy. Thy words hath opened the many back sides where storeth minds.
Even we didn’t know that we were supposed to be masters in a secular country and were given higher rights than minorities. Its a wonder why many “Hindu masters” along with “oppressed Muslims” opposed and protested against CAA when it targeted Muslims? Why we show solidarity when minorities are oppressed regardless of religion or caste?
Perhaps we should, according to you, also open up our backsides wide like you and Pakistanis did and let your version of “Truth” and “Rights” reign over persecution of minorities.
What a non snesical article with quaint metrics! The simple truth is all SAARC Nations took India’s lead of enabling a lockdown. For all the noises that Imran Khan made against lockdown; the Governors of various provinces were more sensible and simply followed the Modi model.
What is he purpose of this comparison. Any lessons to be drawn by India?
Why compare with Pakistan! why not sweden
It’s meaningless to present an article with data which is a week old. How absurd when the situation is so fluid. Is it so difficult to update data to at least two days old?
IK has been ranting about lockdown and genocide in Kashmir for past 9 months. But Then he’s also been saying lockdown cannot happen in our countries as people will die from hunger. So by his own rational it’s clear he lied about lockdown in Kashmir as no one died due to starvation there!
As for everything in Pakistan, what you see is not what you get! The 12000Rs allocation is a number fudging exercise combined with usual smoke and mirrors. Typical Pakistan, high on rhetoric but low on ground result!
The per million yardstick for measurement is flawed. As it takes the full 1.3b population as total. However a big majority of the already isolated population in villages, is not and was never under threat so didnt need testing. In reality the Indian testing numbers are reasonably high considering only big cities.
IMPROVE THE LEVEL OF JOURNALISM.
Which country has performed better to handle the crisis does not only depend on per capita tests, cases and relief package.
How successful were the lockdowns?
Have the the countries been able to identify the hotsopts of the infection?
Are they working on a containment strategy?
Is the virus in the stage of community spread?
What is the plan going forward?
Why don’t you ask poor and migrant workers how Indian feel about response to crisis in india? Pakistans response has been much much better. There are no crisis in Pakistan,people are not dying of hunger and dying to go home
Yeah? Pandemic is in community spread stage in Pakistan. Hospitals are running at full capacity. Now, Pakistanis can do nothing except let all nation get infected, let people die in droves and obtain herd immunity. That is why Pakistan is opening up. Infection and death figures of Pakistan are very under reported and at this stage, I don’t think there is much use of the numbers in Pakistan anyways.
Also, no one is dying of hunger in India. India has enough food for three years. In fact we are giving food to afghanistan and other countries too. In Pakistan, shop keepers are on street saying they are dying of hunger. Indian cities have large no. of migrant labourers because they can move arround the nation at no cost because we have good railways. They want to go home like all of us. That does not mean that no food is reaching them.
Now what’s your opinion. India daily case 60000 vs Pakistan’s 600
And no cases in Afghanistan. Yet when Pakistani cricket players had to leave for England, a lot of them turned out positive. You won’t find any cases if you don’t do any tests. This strategy was applied by Pakistan as by other countries who could not afford importing the COVID-test kits. India has consistently been doing over a million tests every single day.
Thats not what your not so bright PM has to say. He insists people are dying from hunger thats why he wants to open up.
How magical of ThePrint……….never ever they will put Pak in bad light, any petro dollar connection??
Silly article.
ThePrint is an element of hate India in general and Hindus in particular squad. living up to their bad reputation.
Please put out good and sensible articles. It is unfair to compare India and Pakistan now. The world media compares us to the likes of China and South Africa in terms of economy and GDP growth. And here you are still busy in India Pakistan masala. If you are going to pitch in third world countries from subcontinent then definitely, India, also a third world country, will come out as a winner because we have far more resources than them. Whats the benefit in being “Andho me kana Raja”?
If you want our government to progress, compare arrangements in our country to those in South Korea/ New Zealand. And highlight the gaps where we lack.
Nonsense article
“..cannot be defined as a India v Pakistan contest..” Then you go on to say India came on top… !
you have made it a contest by way of your article duh!
Stop lying Pakistan is doing much better than India
Doing better at what? Only thing Pakistan is better at is begging for money from everyone. Whole country has survived for past 73yrs on handouts from sugar daddy US, Saudi or now China. Learn from Bangladesh, they beat you in every aspect of progress!
right with what survey?
There is no point in comparing with Pakistan. There are many countries who have handled the Covid-19 crisis better than India- Germany, Taiwan, South Korea to name the few. The distinguishing factor is that they anticipated the threat well in advance and planned better. Our own state of Kerala could be complemented for the same reasons. India, as a country woke up late and our response was a knee-jerk reaction. It would be our good luck if we come out of the crisis without much damage.
Very fair observations!
The only objective of this silly article is to hyphenate India with Pakistan, twist facts and plant the idea in people’s minds that we aren’t that much better than that joke of a failed nation across the border.
Leftist garbage. Stop publishing nonsense.
Rather live in a ‘failed State’ but As a free muslim than be a slave like yourself to hindutva masters! muslims Like you in India are suckers for punishment. How many of your fellow muslims have to be murdered, raped and oppressed before you get your head out of your backside and stand up for Truth and your rights?
Wise words oh free man named Jimmy for thy words hath opened up the many butt holes where storeth minds.
Even we didn’t know that we were supposed to be masters in a secular country and were given higher rights than minorities. Its a wonder why many “Hindu masters” along with “oppressed Muslims” opposed and protested against CAA when it targeted Muslims? Why do we show solidarity when minorities are oppressed regardless of religion or caste?
Perhaps we should, according to you, also open up our backsides wide like you and Pakistan did and let your version of “Truth” and “Rights” reign over persecution of minorities.
We didn’t know that we were supposed to be masters in a secular country and were given higher rights than minorities. Its a wonder why many “Hindu masters” along with “oppressed Muslims” opposed and protested against CAA when it targeted Muslims? Why do we show solidarity when minorities are oppressed regardless of religion or caste?
Perhaps we should let your version of “Truth” and “Rights” reign over persecution of minorities.