The Economic Survey 2020-21 (Vol.1) extols India’s approach to containing the first wave of COVID-19 as “humane, evidence-based and informed by Nobel-Prize winning research”. It goes on to predict that “the prospect of India facing a strong second wave is receding with the start of the vaccination this year”. Whether the no-notice, ill-prepared lockdown was “sagacious and humane” or “brutal and inept” is certainly a matter of academic and policy debate. But what is beyond debate is that the Economic Survey’s evidence-based foresight of “receding prospect of a second wave” is downright wrong.
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