India, May 26 -- As the highly contagious COVID -19 torments the nation, some "eminent" economists advised the Centre to nationalise all private assets of above-poverty-line citizens (cash, real estate, property and bonds among others) to fund their ideas. One doesn't know if this negates that other great panacea for all economic ills - privatisation of public sector assets - but that's another story.

On May 22, former Planning Commission member Abhijit Sen, former Chief Economic Advisor Deepak Nayyar, R Nagaraj of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, economists Pranab Bardhan, Jean Dreze and others urged the Centre to provide free care for all COVID-19 patients, something done in Government hospitals. Yet this mundane ad...