India’s vanishing economy

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi having imposed one of the world’s toughest lockdowns, India's latest economic data is shocking.

Narendra Modi
Modi has promised a support package worth 10% of GDP © Shutterstock
(Image credit: © Prabhat Kumar Verma/Pacific Press/Shutterstock)

India faces a terrible choice, says Sadanand Dhume in The Wall Street Journal. Most countries are grappling with a trade-off between “lives and livelihoods”, but in an economy where more than 80% of people live on less than $5.50 a day, lockdowns are proving an unaffordable luxury.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed one of the world’s toughest lockdowns on 25 March. Curbs have been eased recently, yet infections have not peaked and a lack of testing hardly helps: as of 30 April New York state had tested more people for Covid-19 than the whole of India.

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.