New Delhi: Famous British economist Jim O’Neill, who is also the chair of influential UK based think tank Chatham House, Wednesday praised China for its ‘fast and aggressive’ response to contain the coronavirus outbreak and suggested that India would have been unable to handle it.
Participating in a discussion on a television show, O’Neill praised the ‘Chinese model’ to contain the pandemic, and said the West should emulate the model.
“Thank God this didn’t start in somewhere like India. There’s absolutely no way that the quality of Indian governance could move to react in the way that the Chinese have done, that’s the good side of the Chinese model, and I think you could probably say the same about Brazil too,” said the economist who is also known for coining the acronym BRICS.
O’Neill further added that the virus had “brought out the best and worst of the Chinese model.”
“The virus could have initially spread quicker because of the dominance of President Xi Jinping and the diminished responsibility of officials in Wuhan. That said, it’s often like a lot of other things when China got hit with a crisis over the last 30 years — once they realized the scale of it, the system seems to be capable of dealing with it pretty quickly, relative to other places, and pretty decisively,” O’Neill added.
Meanwhile, India expressed its reservations over the statement. India’s High Commission official Vishwesh Negi told CNBC that O’Neill’s statement was “ill-informed and irresponsible.”
It may be mentioned here that the Union government has announced several measures to contain the spread of the disease. It recently announced that all visas, barring diplomatic and employment, stand cancelled till 15 April 2020. The government has issued a ‘strong advisory’ against foreign travel until advised otherwise. Tourists and other visitors coming from or with travel history to China, Italy, Iran, Republic of Korea, France, Spain and Germany after February 15 will be quarantined for at least 14 days.
Meanwhile back home, some of the primary schools, anganwadis and cinema halls in some of the affected states will remain shut till March 31. The Karnataka government has issued temporary regulation which asked all government and private hospitals to have dedicated flu corners for screening of suspected cases of COVID-19.
As of Wednesday, India has at least 60 confirmed coronavirus patients including 16 Italian tourists. Some of the reports put the number at 65.