Shoaib Daniyal on COVID in India

Shoaib Daniyal writes in Scroll of the WHO's estimate that India’s death toll from COVID was 4.7 million. He says-

This meant India was the country hardest hit by Covid, with approximately a third of the global deaths.

India's population is over four times that of the US. This means India was not hit as hard as the US in per capita terms. But India is much much poorer than America. COVID deaths were a small fraction of Spanish Flu deaths when the population was twenty percent of what it is now. Those deaths had zero political impact even thought there was plenty of political agitation against the British rulers at the time.

We would expect excess mortality from any negative economic shock - which is what COVID was- in a country as poor as India. But we have no means of measuring what that might be. We don't know what the mortality was before the epidemic. We don't know what it is now. We don't know what it will be. Why? India is as poor as shit. It can't even measure its own poverty.

It is in the WHO's interests to inflate the number of deaths. Sadly, it won't get more funding precisely because it was entirely useless during this crisis. Similarly, the bleeding hearts who are having orgasms over all those juicy unreported deaths have completely failed to turn the thing into political capital. Modi is remembered as taking a strong line against the danger but then giving up when the popular mood was for letting the thing run its course.

Shoaib, naively asks

Here is a paradox though: why did Indian democracy produce no political reaction to this incredible distress? 

The answer is that Indians know India is as poor as shit. The Government did what it could but then gave up because...urm...India is as poor as shit. Still Modi made an effort and gained by it. Shailaja in Kerala did very well but she has been dumped from the Cabinet. Why? The CM wants to be the Deng Xiaoping of Kerala. He wants Growth. Let Health outcomes worsen. The Economy must come first. This is because India is as poor as shit. That's the epidemic Indians aren't keen on. 

At the start of the pandemic, the Modi government seized emergency political powers,

It jailed its opponents- right? Wrong. It invoked the National Disaster Management Act and the Epidemic Diseases Act. That was perfectly proper. COVID was a disaster. It was an epidemic. But no 'political' as opposed to administrative powers were seized.  

placing the Union government in charge of the states when it came to directing the pandemic response.

Which is perfectly proper. India's constitution is unitary, not federal. 

In theory, therefore, the Bharatiya Janata Party should have been held accountable by voters for the collapse during the second wave.

It was considered to have made a good effort before giving up as the popular mood changed.  

It should also have been blamed for the incredibly harsh, unplanned lockdown in 2020

but was rewarded for trying to do the right thing just as with demonetization. 

which saw the Indian economy suffer more hurt than any other.

The Indian economy suffered massively in one quarter but then rebounded. The lesson was plain. India is as poor as shit. It can afford to lose people. It can't afford lockdown. 

What explains this inexplicable breakdown in the democratic accountability loop for a catastrophe the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic?

Indians know India is as poor as shit. They know the BJP didn't make the country as poor as shit. It did its best to save lives but then gave up because...urm...India is as poor as shit. There is a 'democratic accountability loop' in India. If Congress is run by a fucking cretin, Congress loses elections. Modi isn't a cretin. Yogi isn't a cretin. Vijayan isn't a cretin. They get re-elected because of accountability. Meanwhile Scroll, like the Wire, get by on subsidies. This means it does not have to compete by doing good journalism. Shoaib can write any old tosh and pocket his salary. Will more subsidized media outlets unseat Modi? No. That money is wasted. Subsidies produce careerist stupidity. Competition produces Prashant Kishore.

The single largest reason seems to be lack of media critique.

If only Scroll was given lots more money it could do lots more media critique and then Modi would fall for sure. Why is the West wasting money on Zelenskyy? It should give money to Scroll.Russia to write about Putin's COVID failures. Then Putin will burst into tears and resign.  

Throughout the pandemic, big media houses – especially Hindi and English-languages outlets based in the National Capital Region – chose to avoid blaming the government for both the economic losses as well as the healthcare collapse.

Why? Rich peeps who own media outlets were scared shitless of dying. They liked the lockdown. Then they calmed down. Maybe it would be no bad thing if one's elderly relatives popped their clogs and you inherited their money. 

Indians know why healthcare will collapse. It has to do with the fact that India is as poor as shit.  

Instead, Covid-19 was portrayed as a global act of god that had affected each and every country in much the same way.

Unless, like China, the Government could shoot people and then bill their families for the cost of the bullet.  

Very few news reports made it to the mainstream Hindi and English media showing government malfunction or the fact that India was one of the worst-hit countries.

But Indians know India is as poor as shit. The country is very very over-populated. All we ask is that some other people die so that we might get more breathing room.  

In fact, even the latest WHO data was covered by the mainstream media quite poorly, with newspapers and TV channels either simply choosing to avoid highlighting it in their reporting or, in some cases, uncritically running with the government line.

Foreigners keep trying to tell India that it is as poor as shit. Our response is that we are only as poor as shit because we are too busy fucking your Mother to get a job.  Anyway, WHO is utterly useless.

Along with lack of government critique, large media houses also devoted significant amounts of airtime to absurd accusations that Indian Muslims were responsible for the spread of Covid-19 in the country.

Shoaib is Muslim. His response should have been that he was too busy fucking your Mother to spread anything.  

The Tablighi Jamat came in for intense scrutiny during this part of the news cycle, with large sections of the media claiming that a meeting of the Muslim organisation before the lockdown was responsible for the virus spreading through India.

The Malaysians first made that discovery. It was true enough. Anyway, the bitterest enemies of that particular organization came from within the Muslim fold.  

There was, of course, little scientific backing for this and two years later all the foreign Tablighis at the event have been freed. However, by turning public anger against a minority group rather than the government, the media hysteria offered a critical safety valve for the BJP.

It could have done but that isn't the road the BJP chose to go down. Why? It would have led to pogroms and ethnic cleansing and the more rapid spread of the disease. Old peeps were scared shitless by this disease. The BJP is getting pretty long in the tooth.  

The Opposition also failed to perform its duty by failing to help Indian voters understand that their predicament was at least partly due to government malfunction.

Scroll gets funding because it is supposed to be 'helping Indian voters understand' that India isn't as poor as shit. Also, no terrorists are Muslim.  

The BJP also made sure that Opposition space was curtailed significantly.

Very true. They would defecate on the more and more of that space while claiming this was mandated by Swacch Bharat. Poor Rahul has to go to nightclub in Kathmandu just to take a pee.  

India’s Parliament, for example, played no part in the pandemic and governance was centralised almost completely in the Union executive.

Shoaib does not understand that the Legislative function is separate from the Executive function. However Parliament can topple the Administration with a vote of no confidence. They can also raise questions and institute committees of inquiry.  

In contrast, democracies like the United Kingdom placed an immense amount of reliance on their legislatures during the pandemic.

No they didn't. The situation was exactly similar because both BoJo and Modi had big enough majorities. But BoJo kept having parties during lockdown while Modi didn't.  

This lack of opposition voice in India allowed the government narrative to become hegemonic.

India has plenty of 'opposition voice'. Shoaib is pretending that Mamta is a dumb doll. 

In theory, democracies are well-placed to handle natural calamities because

they have super-powers? Rich countries are well-placed to handle calamities. The poor as shit may welcome them because they represent an Malthusian check on over-population.  

their internal structures allow them to absorb and respond to extreme stresses compared to more brittle authoritarian governments.

China has had one hundred times less COVID death than the US despite being much poorer and much much more populous. Authoritarian governments aren't brittle. They will fuck you up if you look at them cross ways.  

The most famous explanation of this mechanism has come in the work of economist Amartya Sen, who argued that democracies do well in combating famine thanks to the constant pressure the government is put under by Opposition parties and a free press.

The transition to popularly elected Bengali administrations resulted on two different occasions in huge famine fatalities. Sen is as stupid as shit. The fact is Shurawardy as Minister Civil Supply had most responsibility for the 1943 excess deaths. Yet he became Premier of Bengal and even P.M of Pakistan for a short while. Mujib would have been re-elected if he hadn't been assassinated.  

But what happens to Sen’s model in a country like current-day India where the press is now seen by experts as quite unfree?

Sen's model quits modelling and takes to sucking off homeless dudes because, truth be told, it is very elderly and as stupid as shit.  

India’s rank on the Reports without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, for example, now stands at 150 out of 180 countries (China-ruled Hong Kong is two places higher).

You should hear what India says about 'Reporters without Borders'. I can't print it here because this blog is mainly read by innocent children and easily shocked elderly women. 

In his 2014 book An Uncertain Glory, Sen seems far more critical of the Indian media than in his pioneering work on famine prevention. If a person only read the Indian media, she “would be only vaguely aware of the fact that India has the largest population of seriously undernourished people in the world”, he points out.

Indians who live in India don't need to read the media to be aware that India is as poor as shit. But then Indians don't need to read Sen to know that he has shit for brains.

Like the media, the Opposition is also not functioning in the way it should in a democracy.

Says Shoaib who doesn't understand that the media should get hold of news not just recycle half-baked views.  

In many states and at the Centre, there is little space given to the Opposition to compete fairly. In states like Uttar Pradesh, in fact, the police is often wheeled out to explicitly curtail Opposition activity.

If that activity is of a criminal nature- sure. That's why Yogi was re-elected.  

That India just saw a bruising episode of mass death and economic collapse with almost no political expression might be a significant example of India’s current moment of democratic malfunction.

In other words, Indian democracy did not do whatever it was Scroll's funders wanted it to do. Naughty India! 

Thus Sen’s model, where a democracy with a free press and a vigorous opposition can prevent catastrophes,

The UK has a free press and a vigorous opposition. That is why nobody died of COVID here. The Daily Mail published pictures of COVID's mummy taking it up the arse from Sir Keir Starmer. The virus felt so ashamed it dared not show its face in this country.  

might not apply to India in 2020-’21 at all. That is possibly why India experienced such a catastrophe during the first two Covid-19 waves.

India is as poor as shit. But because the population is young no virus is going to provide the Malthusian check on its overpopulation. The problem is that the rich don't want to die. In the short run they may be able to enforce a lockdown. Medium to long term nothing of the sort is possible. That is why wealthy Indians are buying bolt-holes in New Zealand and Alaska and so forth.  

 

Raghuram Rajan & Post Covid Society

Raghuram Rajan writes in Project Syndicate-

Even with the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, speculation has turned to what society will look like afterward.

The pandemic is global. Societies differ greatly from each other. Economic arrangements can change quite drastically in response to an exogenous shock with relatively little impact on 'what society looks like afterward.' We may speak of 'hysteresis' or the inertia of Paretian 'residues and derivations'. If history is any guide, 'speculation' on what society will look like is simply an exercise in self-indulgent fantasy.

Citizens, shocked by how easily their lives can be upended, will want to reduce risk.

They will want to pool risk with those with similar exposure while separating from being pooled with those with a different exposure profile.  This militates for 'Tiebout sorting'. Different regions are likely to make different trade-offs depending on demographic and economic conditions. Obviously, highest risk groups will adopt stricter protocols.

A separate point has to with not risk but Uncertainty. 'Regret minimizing' behavior will displace 'Utility maximization'.

According to the emerging new consensus,

there is no such thing- this is just ultracrepidarian hot air which the lockdown's enforced leisure has produced from the chattering classes

they will favor more government intervention to stimulate demand (by pumping trillions of dollars into the economy), protect workers, expand health care, and, of course, tackle climate change.

But, at the threat of higher taxes, all these concerns will disappear. As for 'climate change', we see Government action to bail out the oil industry. What we won't see is anything concerted on climate change because yellow vests we all have with us in the boot of our cars.

But every country has many layers of government, so which one should expand?

Layers of Government are already maximally expanded on the basis of willingness and ability to pay.
It is clear that some 'layers of government' are wholly worthless and should be quietly euthanized.

Clearly, in the United States, only the federal government has the resources and mandate for nationwide decisions on issues such as health care and climate change.

Clearly, the opposite is the case. The Federal Government has neither the incentive nor the constitutional power to do any such thing. Does Rajan not get that the days of the Warren Court are long gone? Has he never heard of the Federalist capture of the Bench?

Yet it doesn’t necessarily follow that this level of government should grow larger still.

No shit, Sherlock!

After all, it could adopt policies that protect some constituencies while increasing the risks faced by others.

You mean, it could do what it has always done? Thank you for your service, Captain Obvious!

In the case of COVID-19, some countries have centralized decision-making about when to impose and lift lockdown measures, whereas others have left these choices to state governments, or even municipalities. (Others, like India, are in transition between these approaches.) What has become clear is that not all localities face the same trade-offs.

How was it not a priori clear to Rajan?  Does this Tamil Brahmin, my age- albeit much brighter and better looking- really not get that America aint like India?

The Econ Theory of localized, idiographic, trade-offs is known as Tiebout Modelling. Why not explain that to your audience?

In crowded New York City, a strict lockdown may have been the only way to get people off the streets, and its economic impact may have been softened by the fact that many there work in skilled services like finance, which can be done remotely. Moreover, even laid-off waiters and hotel workers know they won’t get their jobs back until the public feels safe going out again. Health concerns seem to be paramount.

So, externalities differ depending on demographic and occupational factors. This militates for Tiebout sorting. Why not explain this concept and admit that American Law already incorporates this in a 'bottom up' fashion?  Is it the case that Rajan doesn't want to trespass on 'Law & Econ' territory? Why? It isn't an ancient Indian burial ground. It's stuff you should have studied as an Undergrad.

In contrast, in Farmington, New Mexico, the New York Times reports that, “few people know anyone who was ill from the coronavirus, but almost everyone knows someone unemployed by it.” The lockdown, imposed by the state’s Democratic governor, seems to be unpopular across a community that was already in serious economic decline before the pandemic. In this case, economic concerns have trumped more modest health worries.

Bravo Rajan! You just came out and said that Gov. Grisham is as stupid as shit! Speaking personally, I don't agree. I love her. The blame belongs to the cretins in her Party.

These differences show the drawbacks of a centralized, one-size-fits-all approach.

But, Rajan, if idiographic factors have salience, then your own nomothetic approach represents a waste of resources.

But decentralization can also be problematic.

No. We are speaking of Aumann type 'correlated equilibria' here. It doesn't matter if the 'Public signal' is emitted by the 'Center' or any other Schelling focal source. Yes, in India, Modi did a great job. True, BoJo & Trump & whichever meatball heads up Sweden, shat the bed. But, this may not be their fault. It may be that charismatic pointy-heads like you screwed the pooch.

If regions have contained the virus to different degrees, is travel between them still possible?

Yes. Of course. Don't be stupid.

It stands to reason that safer regions would want to bar visitors from potential hot zones – or at least subject them to lengthy quarantines.

Playing the Race Card, are we, Rajan? Shame on you. I thought us Iyers were better than that.

A fast, cheap, reliable testing system might solve the problem, but that is currently unavailable.

Sez a dude who literally has no idea what he is talking about!

Some degree of harmonization between regions can therefore be beneficial, not least in the procurement of medical supplies.

If so, it will occur absent Rajan's proforma comment.

In the absence of federal coordination, US states have been in a bidding war with one another over scarce medical supplies from China.

Why not simply say- in the absence of a One Party State in the wholly Unitary State of America (formally known as the United States)- the same sort of stuff is happening as people in the UK and Germany and India and China and everywhere else are complaining about?

In normal times, competitive markets would allocate such goods most efficiently.

Fuck off! Competitive markets CAN'T allocate 'such goods' efficiently at all. Why? Externalities are huge when it comes to communicable diseases. Does Rajan not read over what he writes?

But in a health emergency, markets may perform poorly, allocating goods according to buyers’ ability to pay rather than their need; rich states would buy up all the ventilators and testing kits, leaving poorer states with none. The country’s ability to contain the pandemic would suffer.

Oddly, the reverse is the case because of 'Knightian Uncertainty'. We benefit if there are more and more 'separating equilibria' because different Structural Causal Models get a crack of the whip. Risk pooling should be on the basis of 'costly signals' where the fitness landscape is radically Uncertain.

In this situation, centralized procurement could keep prices lower, potentially enabling more need-based allocation.

This cretin just advocated hydrochloroquinine for everybody! Where Knightian Uncertainty exists, we don't want 'centralized procurement' of anything. We want to maximize 'psuedo-random'  exploration of the fitness landscape.

But “could” and “potentially” are the operative words.

As opposed to 'shut the fuck up'.

If a central government has questionable motives or simply is incompetent, the calculus changes.

In which case, there is no 'calculus'. Does Rajan think that Newton and Leibniz worried about the 'motives' or 'competence' of infinitesimals?

As we have seen in Brazil, Mexico, Tanzania, and the US,

Tanzania? Racist much, Rajan? Why not mention Sweden or the United Kingdom? Is it coz their leaders are White?

when heads of government minimize the dangers of the pandemic, they can do considerable harm to their country’s response.

Though, as Economists, we both know they could do much more harm by pretending that some 80 year old's life is as important as an 8 year old.

Among other failures, Brazil’s federal government seems to have had difficulty distributing ventilators it bought.

No kidding! The thing was built to be a giant 'car-wash' for dirty money.

In the United States, Republican-governed states have allegedly had easier access to central medical supplies than states where Democrats are in control.

Allegedly? You mean it might not actually have happened?

And in India, the central government imposed a stringent lockdown without making the necessary arrangements for millions of migrant workers, who were forced to flee the cities for their home villages.

In other words, the Government did not ensure the purpose of the lockdown was defeated before it could be implemented.

Families with children walked hundreds of miles, helped only by the kindness of strangers and local authorities, and potentially carrying the virus with them.

Since they were potentially carrying the virus with them, the Government should have helped them get home more quickly because....urm... that's what Rajan himself would do.

A decentralized decision-making process might have allowed states that locked down later (because they initially had fewer cases) to learn better management from those that went first.

So, India already had a 'decentralised decision making process' according to which States locked down on their own timetable. The Center was a mere 'Aumann signaller'.

Given that extremes of centralization and decentralization can both be problematic, a coordinated middle ground may work best.

Rajan- you fucking cretin- you are supposed to be an Economist. All that is needed is a Schelling focal Aumann signaller for better correlated equilibria. This is what is happening anyway.

The federal government might establish minimal standards for closing down and opening up, while leaving the actual decision to states and municipalities. That said, if there is to be a bias, it should be toward decentralization, following the principle of subsidiarity, whereby powers are delegated to the lowest-possible administrative level that will be effective.

Government's can affect expectations by announcing lockdowns or wage-price freezes etc. But the thing is short term- in the region of 90 days . Economists know this.

Subsidiarity is a crock of shite unless locally raised funds are spent locally. That means local mechanism design is incentive compatible. Sadly, this seldom happens and even when it does the thing turns into a Tiebout Model with Manorial rents

There are important reasons to favor a carefully managed decentralization.

Just as there are important reasons to favor a carefully managed trajectory for this solar system around a Milky Way which has been revealed to have Black Hole tendencies of a decidedly Fascist type.

Not only do members of smaller political entities tend to face similar problems; they also typically demonstrate greater social and political solidarity, which makes it easier for them to engage with one another and find solutions.

This is only true if there is 'Tiebout sorting'. You have to end 'cheap talk' based risk pooling and institute 'costly signalling' separating equilibria. Otherwise, Rajan will go on writing shite like this.

While local politics might occasionally resemble the Hatfield-McCoy feud of nineteenth-century Kentucky and West Virginia,

Rajan is Indian- not the good sort, in this context- and is perpetuating a myth. "Local Politics' was wholly unaffected by the feud.

it generally suffers less gridlock and antagonism than what one finds in central legislatures today.

Rajan is speaking of a country he only emigrated to relatively recently. Under Trump, very significant changes in US policy have occurred without any 'gridlock'. The truth is the thing can be sidestepped by a smart, or very ruthless, Chief Executive wherever it occurs. Academics however can make a little money pretending otherwise.

And people feel a greater sense of ownership over decisions taken by their locally elected or appointed bodies. This empowerment can help them devise policies to benefit from national and global markets, rather than being at their mercy.

Is Rajan aware that some locally elected bodies want young, well built, black people, who may or may not have committed some minor crime against property,  to be shot and killed? The Global Market that many Americans want to be protected against is the Market for the Labor of smart Asian immigrants- like Rajan.

This is why, as we prepare policies to aid the recovery and strengthen post-pandemic health, education, and regulatory systems, we should also think about who will make the decisions and where.

Rajan says 'we prepare' some shite and then says we should first 'think about who' will prepare that shite. What one earth does he mean?

For example, a fair share of stimulus spending on infrastructure should take the form of block grants to communities, which are in the best position to allocate funds according to need.

Or just run away with the money. 

And while national climate policies cannot be determined separately in every community, they can at least reflect a bottom-up consensus.

No they can't. Look at the Yellow Vest movement. There is no bottom up consensus. There is merely virtue signalling.

Rising authoritarianism around the world reflects widespread yearning for charismatic political leaders with whom ordinary people can identify with.

But, Democracy can provide a wide choice of 'charismatic leaders'. Why does Rajan think Democracies will throw up leaders 'ordinary people can't identify with'? Is it coz Rahul Baba was crap? Yet, if the fellow had just read from a teleprompter, he'd have become P.M prior to 2014 and saved Congress from oblivion. Shame Rajan hitched his wagon to the wrong Party. The fact remains, any leader can talk in a way that 'ordinary people identify with'. All that needs to be done is to hire a good speech-writer. 

Such demagogues have used their popular support to avoid constitutional checks and balances, taking their countries down ruinous paths.

In which case, 'constitutional checks and balances' were worthless.

Expanding government further while limiting the risk of authoritarianism requires independently powerful bodies that also enjoy popular support. Constitutionally decentralizing more powers to regional and local government may be the way forward.

The following was my comment which, no doubt, Project Syndicate will censor sooner or later- 

Ultracrepidarian 'public intellectuals' can come to any 'consensus' they like but they are wholly irrelevant. Consider the fate of the Indian public intellectuals (luckily Rajan wasn't one) who signed on to 'activist' Yogendra Yadav's' 7 point plan to tackle the pandemic. Too late they realized that they had committed themselves to the expropriation of all private property! Now they are practicing 'intellectual distancing' from ultracrepidarian academics who blithely witter on about subjects they know nothing about.

The reason both Economists and many Epidemiologists have looked foolish is because of 'Knightian Uncertainty'- in plain terms, this means the people building the models don't know what they are talking about. They pretend there is an underlying probability distribution which will quickly become apparent. The truth is that superior results come from competing idiographic 'structural causal models'. Mimetic effects yield rapid, relatively efficient, solutions. Going back to the drawing board yields nothing buy stupidity and concurrency deadlock.

What we have seen is not that 'heads of Government' matter but that 'Institutional Memory' at a much lower level of decision making is what determines outcomes. The fact is, 'centralization' and 'decentralization' are hysteresis driven and idiographic. They aren't frictionless, memory-less, menu options- as one might pretend in a classroom teaching eighteen year olds.

Obviously, pandemics- like everything else- do involve 'trade-offs' and this is is an idiographic matter. This militates for 'Tiebout sorting'- nothing more. But, that already obtains purely because 'public goods' are actually 'club goods' and incentive compatibility requires local mechanisms with a degree of 'manorial rents'.

Rajan mentions India- which he knows something about. Health is a State, not a concurrent, subject under the Indian constitution. Furthermore, only the State, not the Central Civil Service, is empowered to deal with problems such as those posed by migrants. It is foolish to pretend that the Center's response could have been very different. In a country where the Center could, at best, spend 200 dollars extra on those whose livelihoods are at risk, it is obvious that sooner or later, only those who can afford to isolate will be able to do so. The gamble is- as a witty Indian epidemiologist put it- that this foreign Virus will find the Indian climate so demoralizing and inhospitable that it will lose the will to live faster than it can kill.

In the short run, any Government can create compliance through a sort of shock and awe effect. Older people will remember President Nixon's 90 day wage and price freeze. The 'Nixon shock' did affect expectations temporarily. But then people realized that a Democracy can't actually jail a whole bunch of Teamsters and CEOs. After all, America couldn't even jail any sizable number of Draft Dodgers.

Governments only have as much power as citizens give them. Academics have no say in this. They may feel this is because 'charismatic leaders' are misusing their sex-appeal to seduce the masses. The solution is not far to seek. Public intellectuals must take off their lab coats and don fishnet stockings and stilleto heels. They should take the hairpins out of their tightly coiled hair bun and let their glistening blonde locks tumble over their heaving bosoms. I'm not saying it worked for me- but Rajan is a few years younger than me and weighs at least 20 kg less.

On the other hand, if you believe 'authoritarian' populists are running amok- then, for God's sake, don't start talking as if changing the Constitution is a quick fix. Why? The guys who will get to change the Constitution are the guys you consider evil. Thus, for the nonce, you must pretend that nothing much can change because hysteresis rules, Theoretical Econ is just an armchair activity of an essentially peurile type.