As the 21-day nationwide lockdown has already being extended till May 3, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday described the ongoing lockdown as “one-size-fit-all”, and suggested that it needs a “smart” upgrade.

Former Congress president took to Twitter and said, “The one-size-fit-all lockdown has brought untold misery and suffering to millions of farmers, migrant labourers, daily wagers and business owners. It needs a “smart” upgrade, using mass testing to isolate virus hotspots and allowing businesses in other areas to gradually reopen.”

The one-size-fit-all lockdown has brought untold misery & suffering to millions of farmers, migrant labourers, daily wagers & business owners.

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It needs a “smart” upgrade, using mass testing to isolate virus hotspots & allowing businesses in other areas to gradually reopen.

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 13, 2020

Last month, PM Modi had announced the 21-day lockdown which suddenly led everything and everybody to a stand-still. Transportation, businesses, factories, borders of states all are nonfunctional for these 21 days.

Announcing the extension of the lockdown today, PM Modi said that though India has had to bear a heavy loss in terms of economy, the lives of the citizens of the country are more important.

Migrant labourers the 80 per cent work force of India were left stranded, without work, money or food in big cities. Many of them took to walking on-foot for hundreds of kilometres to reach their native villages.

The government then got the state borders sealed, arranged for buses for some of then to reach their villages and the rest who had not left to be given food and shelter.

According to the economists, the lockdown has put a lot of burden on the already dwindling economic growth amid low GDP. The economy will grow at 3.2 per cent in the January-March period and contract by 6.1 per cent (June quarter) and 0.5 per cent September quarter, before rising by 1.4 per cent in the last quarter of the calendar year, Japanese brokerage Nomura said in a report on Monday.

“Despite spike in inflation, RBI to announce another rate cut in December, say analysts.

The World Bank on Sunday said the coronavirus outbreak has severely disrupted the Indian economy, magnifying pre-existing risks to its outlook.
In its report “South Asia Economic Update: Impact of COVID-19”, the World Bank estimated the Indian economy to decelerate to 5 per cent in 2020 and projected a sharp growth deceleration in fiscal 2021 to 2.8 per cent in a baseline scenario.

The COVID-19 outbreak came at a time when India’s economy was already slowing, due to persistent financial sector weaknesses, the report said.

To contain it, the government imposed a ‘lockdown’ with restrictions on mobility of goods and people. “The resulting domestic supply and demand disruptions (on the back of weak external demand) are expected to result in a sharp growth deceleration in FY21 to 2.8 percent in a baseline scenario (an estimate subject to wide confidence intervals),” the report said, adding that the services sector will be particularly impacted.