‘India should have looked at Covid-19 response in East’: Rajiv Bajaj to Rahul Gandhi

Industrialist Rajiv Bajaj said on Thursday that India made a mistake by looking at the western world while preparing its response to the coronavirus crisis - in this case a lockdown.

He said that there are many countries in the East which have fared better and India could have taken a cue from them.

“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 a right benchmark in any sense,” Bajaj said in a conversation with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

Watch | ‘We flattened the wrong curve’: Rajiv Bajaj tells Rahul Gandhi on Covid fight

“We all are aware that there can’t be any medical infrastructure that can be adequate to combat something like this (Covid-19),” he added.

Bajaj further explained why the West matters a lot. “I think the perception is that if a developed country - like the US - or a developed continent like Europe can be affected by Covid-19, everyone is threatened,” he said.

“When the rich and famous get affected, it makes headlines. Eight thousand children die of starvation in Africa every day, but who cares,” he added.

Gandhi held the first such dialogue on April 30 when he discussed the coronavirus pandemic and its economic implications with former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan.

The former Congress president then held a conversation with Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee who had said India should come out with a large enough stimulus package to revive demand.

Also read: India needs big stimulus package, says Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee

Gandhi last week spoke to globally renowned public health experts - Professor Ashish Jha of Harvard Global Health Institute and Swedish epidemiologist Johan Giesecke.