Before beginning of this year, we all were busy in your daily schedules-------working, studying, jogging, exercising and the daily routines we used to follow. Suddenly an unknown flu virus came and that changed everything. We are stuck at our home and it’s beginning to make our lives so boring!
Post Covid era:
We were busy enjoying and partying to welcome the New Year
but little did we know what was waiting to happen this year in our lives. Although
we were hearing cases of the new virus, COVID-19
which had impacted so much in the Wuhan
province of China, but as everyone,
I was also thinking that won’t affect India
since we have very few incomings from China
as compared to US and Europe. Although he world has been
through several major epidemics like Ebola,
but those really did not impact our country much and this time also I felt it
won’t be much different from its predecessors.
The entry of Covid in India:
Although I was partly correct predicting that the virus won’t
come to India from China, but soon I was wrong to predict that it won’t hit our
country as the first case of Corona was reported on 30th January
2020. It did not take long for the enemy to start spreading its root. The
Indian Government decided to bring all the wishful citizens bring back to their
homes and along with them came the virus without Visa permit through an
indirect route. The selfishness of few people wanting to “live their lives” and totally ignoring the quarantine directives,
cost the whole of India. It helped the spread of the disease to a rapid scale
in a 1.4 billion populated country.
The Lockdown
announcement:
On 24th March 2020, PM Narendra Modi in response to the growing cases of Covid announced total lockdown in the
whole country wherein no flights, trains or buses are going to run, neither
shops that don’t sell essential commodities are going to be opened.
Although by then people in cities were mostly following
general instructions such as wearing mask and washing the hands after coming
from outside, the announcement was the turning point which led to the
disruption of normal life of citizens. The factories, companies, shops-----everything
were closed and people were strictly asked to sit back in their home and not
come out except for emergency. Police started to take action against anyone violating
the lockdown rules and making sure all the citizens follow the guidelines.
Lockdown effect:
People initially had no clue how lockdown seems to be, how
it feels to be confined in their home all day. Few class of jobs like IT were given
Work from Home but most jobs that required to be physically present in the
office were fully affected due to which the first thing that happened was
economic slowdown. People were initially enjoying the vacation, but soon it
turned out to be boring and depressing like living the life in a cage (although it’s fun time for kids without
school!). The economic condition of the companies led to laying off of
several employees adding to the woes of common people.
But the main section affected were the migrant workers; with
no work in the cities and paying bills it was horrifying time for the poor.
Since public transport were not available they had no option to forcing themselves
walk several hundreds of kilometers to reach their hometown in the scorching
heat.
India without
lockdown:
With so many problems impacting our country, is it the worst
thing possible? What if India did
not implement this lockdown at all?
The answer is that would have brought disaster and deaths of
millions of people. Most of the states of India
lack proper equipment to test the virus, very few have required ventilators to
deal with the patients. There would not be a single space left in the hospitals
and majority of people would have died without treatment. There were few states
like Kerala that handled the Covid situation quite well but without
the lockdown, this in no way was possible.
The perfect example is United
States of America which is just a fraction of our population with one of
the world’s best medical facilities and still accounting to the death of more
than 100,000 people. They never did a complete lockdown and now imagine what
would have been our situation!
Conclusion:
It’s unfortunate that these migrant workers had to suffer
and even face death for some; had there be better planning, the scenario would have been better, but a lockdown was need of the
hour. It not only helped to control the exponential growth of Corona in India, but also gave time for
the agencies to prepare our fight. For instance, now we are the second highest
producer of PPE test kits in the world. But lockdown can’t go on until the
vaccines come out, by that time the economic situation of the people will be worse.
Companies having the option of Work from Home should continue to do the same
and other sectors should start their work keeping in my mind the precautionary
measures. We need to prepare ourselves for post Corona era and build our
country again back to the normal state.
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