At least we are equal to China in one thing.

Yesterday the Indian government extended the coronavirus lockdown for two more weeks and divided the country into red, orange and green zones, with red zones seeing severe restrictions and relative freedom in green zones. "The data show 17.7% of all 733 districts are still in the red zone and 38.7% in orange with a significant 43.5% in the green zone. However, all major cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Kolkata, continue to be in the red zone." It is notable that all the cities in the red zone list, except Bengaluru, are in non-BJP ruled states. BJP is the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "The business community reacted cautiously with many pointing out that the partial relaxation of the lockdown won't be enough to repair the fractured supply chain." India's largest selling car company Maruti Suzuki has not sold one car in the whole of April for the first time ever. Industries tend to congregate in certain regions and manufacturing cannot start if these are under lockdown. Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the US, said that the coronavirus will not go away and will almost certainly recur again. What is the point of extending the lockdown if the virus recurs once it is lifted and supply chains remain broken as districts face rolling lockdowns whenever cases are diagnosed? "This is bureaucratic self-indulgence not policy that helps either public health or the economy," said an editorial in the Economic Times. "A second or third round of lockdown will be devastating for the economy, former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan said today." If it is devastating for the economy, which is political suicide, the government will not do it without careful calculation of what it stands to gain in other ways. Under cover of the panic created by lockdowns the government has created an app, innocuously named 'Aarogya Setu", which translates to 'Health Bridge', which is a tracking device on mobile phones. It was started as voluntary but is being made mandatory insidiously. Apparently, an app is being prepared for feature phones and the app will be mandatory in containment areas. The app will be pre-installed in all new smartphones manufactured in India and since cases of Covid-19 will keep recurring it will become a permanent surveillance tool. The biometric identity card Aadhaar, which is based on prints of all 10 fingers and iris scans, also started as voluntary but has now been forced on every person in India, including children. Facial recognition technology has been installed surreptitiously and is being used against citizens. Our GDP is one-fifth that of China, our exports are one-eighth that of China, our foreign reserves are one-seventh that of China, but we are equal to China in surveillance of our citizens. No one can displace Modi for as long as he lives.