科研成果详情

India-one of the world’s most densely populated countries is severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and has the second largest number of confirmed cases followed by the USA as on September 15, 2020. This chapter analyzes the overall features of the outbreak within the country as well as the micro social impacts caused by the coronavirus in India. Based on thematic content of various newspapers, magazines, and other media reports qualitative analyses, it is possible to understand the country features and social impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The first part of the chapter gives a general overview of the outbreak and government responses, and the second section scrutinizes the social impact in relation to micro level socio-economic consequences and epidemiological concerns. In mainstream reports, the impact of COVID-19 outbreak in India has been presented through the macro-economic indicators and emphasis on the negative economic impacts such as decline of growth rate, shrinking Gross Domestic Product (GDP), etc. However, the micro level socio-economic impacts of the outbreak, which are largely caused by the government interventions i.e., lock down, social distancing, etc., persist beyond the statistical number and have spread to every corner of the society. Although statistics revealed that the case fatality rate and death per hundred thousand is relatively low in India compared to other severely affected countries there are reasons beyond the standard epidemiological claims for this trend, reasons which are not properly addressed. This chapter concludes that while, from an epidemiological point of view, India has, thus far, been successful in handing the crisis brought by the global outbreak; however, the social consequences are much larger and need to be taken in consideration before claiming any success.