We have ended (up) with, the worst of both worlds, says Rajiv Bajaj.

New Delhi:

A “draconian” lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus left the country with the “worst of both worlds” and failed to solve the crisis, industrialist Rajiv Bajaj has said in a video interaction with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

“We tried to implement a hard lockdown which was still porous. So, I think we have ended up with the worst of both worlds. On one hand, a porous lockdown makes sure that the virus will still exist and as you said, it is still waiting to hit you when you will unlock. So, you have not solved that problem,” Mr Bajaj, Managing Director of Bajaj Auto, said in the online chat aired this morning.

“But you have definitely decimated the economy. You flattened the wrong curve. It is not the infection curve, it is the GDP curve. This is what we have ended (up) with, the worst of both worlds,” he said.

This is the latest in a series of interactions that Rahul Gandhi has had with economists, experts, industrialists and others since the country went into lockdown in late March. He has earlier held chats with Raghuram Rajan and Abhijit Banerjee.

The Congress MP shared, to a question from Mr Bajaj, that he had been told by someone that a lockdown like this “brings the fear of death in the mind of people” and that is something tough to get rid of.

“Whoever is going to invest in India is going to invest not because of your image, they are going to invest because of what you are and what you have… So the first logic has to be, defend that economy,” Mr Gandhi said.

“If you don’t have an economy left, there is nothing.”