India’s President Modi surprised the entire country on 24 March 2020. At 8 pm, he announced on a government owned news channel that a nationwide lockdown would be enforced from midnight. All workplaces, schools, shops and hotels were shut down. Flights, trains, buses, private vehicles and other transport systems were halted. People were only allowed to leave their homes to pick up essentials and faced a year in jail if they did not have a valid excuse for being outside. India had one of the harshest lockdowns in the world in March, according to Oxford University’s Stringency Index.