5 Urgents Step that India must take to tackle Corona crisis

It is scary.

Either the Government has not learnt any lesson from the experience of the 3weeks’ lockdown, or the PM is unable to express what the Government has learnt and has therefore acted on.

5 things if Government listens to me:

1) My guess is that March salary is more or less paid without cuts. A significant number of people won’t get April salary. This, in addition to the daily wage earner crisis will topple the country’s law and order upside down. Help the businesses to pay salaries. It’s difficult to put money into accounts as the Aadhaar project as an identity program got derailed to an authentication program. Pay the businesses to pay salaries as one of the cash programs. Other cash programs need more thinking. Perhaps paying to the merchant may be an idea. Start an outreach program now.

2) This is an emergency and food stocks need to be utilised like in an emergency giving it in every tehsil and blocks of the country. More emphasis should be given to the URBAN poor.  They should be given assistance that they will be taken care of. There should not be any documentation to be presented for food. Believe me, the people who has food at home won’t come out for free food, for fear of Corona. Wherever possible cooked food should be given, using the machinery of the mid day meal program. Most importantly, covid testing should be focused on these resulting activity areas. All distribution centres should be tracked closely for outbreaks.

3) Road / Water / Train Transport should be strategically opened with rules of minimum social distancing. Rules are as follows: 1) Make a map of buses and train routes that are a must to operate for migrant workers. 2) Only 36 Tickets to be issued per train bogey 2) One Ticket per seat of 2/3 in a bus 3) All state transports should pick the tab 4) No standing traffic in any of these public transport. 5) Clear announcements for only essential travel 6) Make approach to train and railway stations narrow / zigzag to minimise and regularise the flow of passengers 7) Increased testing /Tracking of Corona cases in these focused points of likely gathering. 8/ Change the ringtone to announce only essential travel

4) Strategic manufacturing and Goods transport must start with rules of social distancing. With reduced demand, these two sectors will anyway work less than capacity. Daily tracking of these regions for outbreak is a must. We must allow only closed group manufacturing setups and townships. A map has to be drawn.

5) Since we have limited testing infrastructure, we must focus this infra towards economic and social activity areas only, apart from testing the sick. Test, trace and close the area has to be done with increased focus.

Covid 19 like any living organism will try to survive all sorts of intervention, just like we are trying to survive. So it is quite likely that we can’t stop it from spreading. Complete lockdown has not flattened the spreading curve. One day the lockdown has to end and the virus will find its survival instincts. The only way is to spend the lockdown or semi lockdown stage to DISCIPLINE our civilisation into a structure where we see more permanent physical distancing at one side, and more testing and tracing technology on the other side. According to me, scientists should spend more time in getting a more conclusive and cheaper testing infrastructure than to find a cure. Finding a cure for a virus is tough and a cure for a 2% fatal virus cannot be primary focus. Testing and tracing will be an easier bet on our limited resources.

Please don’t let the situation go out of hand. India can not handle a complete lockdown for another 20 days.

We are all different, and we have to co-exist happily.

TO BE HAPPY WE HAVE TO FIRST ACCEPT THAT EACH ONE OF US IS DIFFERENT.

In a national context, this becomes even more important.

Pierre Trudeau, who many consider a Visionary including myself, had said this amazingly frank statement about his Canadian citizens,

“There is no such thing as a model or ideal Canadian. What could be more absurd than the concept of an "all Canadian" boy or girl? A society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate.”

Now compare this to the writings of MS Gowalkar whose ideas are being made popular in India every passing day.

He wrote that India’s independence in 1947 didn’t constitute real freedom because the founders accepted ‘the perverted concept of territorial nationalism’, which considers all who lives on India’s territory as equal constituents of the nation. He wrote that territorial nationalism is unnatural, unscientific and lifeless hybrid, as compared to the nationalism that is derived from the national culture - ancient and sublime Hinduism.

The suggestion that only a Hindu can be an authentic Indian is an attack to the very ethos of humanity that lives in India. It ends the possibility of a JUST society as majoritarian emotions will marginalise the minority rights.

To this context, Mr Trudeau says,
“The JUST Society will be the one in which the rights of minorities will be safe from the whims of intolerant majorities”.

On a question from a high school student about what happened to his promises of a "Just Society”, he jokingly said, “The next time you see Jesus Christ, ask Him what happened to the just society He promised 2,000 years ago”.

Mr Trudeau firmly believed that “The attainment of a just society is the cherished hope of civilized men. While perhaps more difficult to formulate for groups than for individuals, even the members of majorities — political, religious, linguistic or economic — must know what it is to suffer injustice. My Government is deeply concerned to provide and to ensure increased justice, dignity and recognition to the individual, particularly in an age which is characterized by large governments, industrial automation, social regimentation and old-fashioned laws”.

Mr Trudeau is a nationalist and his love for Canada is well known. But it is based on equality and justice. He brought parliamentary sovereignty to Canada out of UK in 1982. He kept Canada together with his inclusive plural policies when separatism was at its peak.

Even when he had to implement bilingualism (English & French) in Canada he had clarified that

“Bilingualism is NOT an imposition on the citizens. The citizens can go on speaking one language or six languages, or no languages if they so choose. Bilingualism is an imposition on the state and not the citizens.”

He once famously said, “There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation”.

The reason why I thought of Trudeau today is my increasing doubt that India is moving towards majoritarianism, which Trudeau fought till the end, where Muslims and other minorities are not respected. Constant hate has been fed to the innocent minds, even in the times of a world pandemic; and in the absence of a global perspective, sadly, this hatred seems logical and a birth right of the majority.

The ideas of Gowalkar are stemming root like never before. All the three heads of the the country - The PM, the President and the Vice President have learnt their nationalism from the teachings of Gowalkar and RSS. And Gowalkar believed that democracy is a western concept, alien to Hindu culture.

One learned friend tells me recently that constitution was written by humans only. It can be changed and a Hindu Rashtra can be declared just like a secular state was declared in 1950. This surprised me immensely because India was never so frank and open about wanting to be a Hindu Rashtra.

I agree when Gowalkar says ‘territorial nationalism’ is unnatural. Majoritarianism is indeed instinctive and natural in all animal species. That is the reason we needed a constitution to bring in equality, justice and secularism.

Our founding fathers knew that majoritarianism is a recipe for disaster.

Every small region has a majority of some kind. In Assam, Assamese is a majority. Within Assam, in Silchar, Bengali is a majority. India is a Hindu majority but Kashmir is a Muslim majority. Certain constituencies are Muslim majority. Then there are caste majority regions. Who can stop the fire when the animal instinct becomes an acceptable norm? Fanning majoritarianism is simply calling for anarchy, riots and disintegration of united India.

As Mr Shashi Tharoor puts it, “An India that denies itself to some of us could end up being denied to all of us”.

Trudeau had said, “I believe a constitution can permit the co-existence of several cultures and ethnic groups with a single state”.

Like in a marriage to be happy, we say that we have to accept that each one of us is different; we have to say the same for a country to be happy.

Just like territorial nationalism, marriage is also argued by some as ‘unnatural’. But can we even think of killing the institution of marriage? Marriage was the first institution required when humans settled down and stopped being nomads.

TO BE HAPPY WE HAVE TO FIRST ACCEPT THAT EACH ONE OF US IS DIFFERENT.