He said a lot of things after that concerning healthy practices that should halt the spread of the virus but before he could do that, people were already out on the streets panicking and buying things in a bulk. 

There were literally thousands of people on the streets buying everything from rice to meat to soap, basically everything they need to survive for the next 21 days. 

Now, the notification that essential services would be open came out a bit later, by which time the streets were already crowded, like I said. Which defeats the purpose of a lockdown!

Now, I am not going to blame Modi ji for it. I have blamed him for quite a few other things but not this. 

This is on the people who write his speeches. 

See, the long theatrical pauses and the repetition of words, before the big announcement (almost like a drumbeat), building up suspense, it’s all cool for an election campaign speech, not when you are announcing the biggest lockdown in the world. 

We have about 134 crore people in the country, most of whom are not privileged, most of whom are not prepared. So it’s only natural that as soon as they heard lockdownn, they rushed out to the streets. 

Actually, I was pretty nervous when I heard the news about Modi ji announcing something at 8 PM. That’s just PTSD. All that time he talked and he talked, he could have just said that all essential services would be available and should have given us some information about what will be open and what won’t be.

People love Modi ji. He’s won the general elections by a complete majority twice in a row. He’s got a godly status amongst most of us. People really look up to him. 

So all I am saying is, it would have been nice if in the 20-odd minutes he talked, he could have mentioned something about how his government is going to help people during this time of crisis, that would have caused less panic.