We flattened GDP curve instead of COVID: Rajiv Bajaj tells Rahul

Rajiv Bajaj, the managing director of Bajaj Auto Limited has called the national lockdown due to COVID-19 a mistake that has weakened the country’s economy.

In an online conversation with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Bajaj said while attempting to flatten the COVID-19 curve, the government has ended up flattening the GDP curve.

“You have definitely decimated the economy. You flattened the wrong curve. It is not the infection curve, it is the GDP curve. This is what we have ended with, the worst of both worlds. In my view, what should have been done is something more right of centre,” he said.

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Bajaj wondered why the central government had to model its COVID-response strategies on western countries, even it could have taken a cue from Asian countries which have fared quite well in curbing the spread of the infection.

“I don’t understand that despite being an Asian country, we sought not to look at what was happening in the East. We looked at the US, France, Italy, the UK, etc. This is not the right benchmark in any sense,” he said.

Calling the lockdown a “devastating phenomenon” which wasn’t even seen during the World War, Rahul said the central government should have allowed chief ministers to tackle the pandemic in their respective regions while acting as an enabler.

“It’s a failed lockdown in India, it’s the only country where the number of infections is increasing when the lockdown is being eased,” he said.

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Rahul’s chat with Bajaj is part of his conversations with industry experts and economists. In previous meetings, former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan and Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee had spoken about the economic effects of the COVID-19 lockdown and suggested ways to recover from it.

Rahul last week spoke to public health experts Ashish Jha of Harvard Global Health Institute and Swedish epidemiologist Johan Giesecke.