India’s government is better at curbing critics than covid-19

MANY INDIANS will remember the coronavirus epidemic less for social distancing, or for watching re-runs of “Ramayan”, a popular 1980s television saga based on Hindu myth, than for the endless queues. Destitute migrant workers hoping for a train home are not the only ones who have been made to line up and wait. Nor are the millions now surviving on charity, or the hope of it. Many in the middle class, too, have been stuck in monstrous tailbacks while trying to make urgent journeys, the victims of arbitrary decisions by babus, as Indians derisively call civil servants.

For example, in the state of Haryana, which almost encircles Delhi, babus have ordered nearly impenetrable roadblocks to seal off the capital. This is akin to Maryland walling off Washington, DC, or the Home Counties blocking access to London. The babus say the blockade is to protect Haryana’s healthier citizens from being infected by sick Delhi-wallahs. The trouble is that severing the city from its suburbs has, among other nuisances, blocked doctors, nurses and patients from travelling to hospitals.

The babus of Delhi, for their part, have generated equally enormous queues. When the central government’s babus decided it was time to lift...