UNPLANNED LOCKDOWN EFFECT
Increasing cases, ailing labourers, increasing unemployment, protesting doctors, dying economy, hollow package and cheerleading middle class, unplanned India has failed its unplanned CoVID-19 lockdown.
With no clear exit plan, we have found ourselves in a lockdown cycle. A demonetization style lockdown is to blame perhaps. Despite having more than two months of time, Govt. of India was unprepared for this pandemic. A mere four hour window prior to the lockdown left migrants and labourers in a desperation and triggered the biggest migrant crisis in India after the partition.
India was engaged otherwise before this crisis. The Delhi elections, Trump rally, Delhi riots, MP theatre thriller etc. Only God knows why the Home Ministry or Delhi Govt. gave permission to organise Tablighi Congregation which turned out to be a big corona hotspot, despite the advisory to refrain from public gatherings. It triggered a hate campaign in the media, social media with several media houses and public figures openly perpetuating hate and fake news against muslims.
Then the migrants started on foot and were brutally stopped. It was only a matter of time that they made themselves appear on national scale. This, as always, was seen as a political opportunity for which parties jumped and migrants were left with blisters on their foot. Dying on roads, rails, trains due to lack of food & shelter and accidents, fleeing filthy quarantine centres, this have become their normal. But make no mistake its no accident, but a result of careless denial. Then state governments diluted labour laws, detained labourers in the states, all will result in greater exploitation of labourers.
Labourers have already lost their jobs. Now others are on the way to that too. Meanwhile national media (and of course so was the middle class) was largely consumed by Chinese conspiratorial theories, Kim Jong Un, useless feel good cheerleading and usual hate mongering.
If this was not enough Cyclone Amphan in WB, locust attacks have all made the situation worse.
Meanwhile many NGOs, Individuals, Gurudwaras, groups of volunteers, public figures like Sonu Sood have come forward to help the needy. Government schemes of welfare (not the hollow package), many institutions have become support to the ailing. This gives a glimpse of hope that situation will improve and India will rise.
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