With the beginning of the year 2020, dark clouds of Corona starred at the world in the garb of a Chinese dragon. On 31st December 2019, when China alerted the World Health Organisation of the outbreak of Novel Corona Virus that was causing severe illness, research data was made available to researchers across the globe. The first positive case of Covid-19 virus outbreak in India was registered almost a month later on 30th January, 2020. This first Indian case, too had its roots back in China. Till date, 81,970 positive cases exist in India whereas 27,920 people have successfully recovered.
These numbers sharply depict that the spread of Covid-19 has been restricted in India. Yet, for a country with 130 crores of population, there have been difficult times for all the citizens. States like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan have swiftly transformed to become the epicenter of Covid-19 in India. Most state governments along with the Union government have extended their wholehearted efforts to fight the pandemic.
In these testing times, the Union Government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has put the entire country under lockdown from 24th March 2020 and that continues even today in a phased manner. Our PM has had a daunting task of handling a country with a whooping 1.3 billion population. China happens to be the only other country with a higher population than India. But the Chinese dragon has been under the radar globally for being allegedly called the wrecker-in-chief and the creator of this global disaster.
While the task of ensuring the welfare of 1.3 billion people rests on Modi’s shoulders, he has faced constant criticism from current chief opposition party in India. During the lockdown that reaches 50 days now, the Union Government has brought in a slew of reforms and measures in the field of economy, healthcare to ensure an overall stability in the country. Here, I quote Michael Ryan, the chief executive director of WHO, who said, “India has a tremendous capacity to deal with this situation and as a country with the second largest population, it will have enormous impact on the entire world’s ability to deal with Covid-19.”
Many observers has testified that the lockdown implemented in India has indeed slowed down the spread of the virus in India. Many ministers of the current Modi cabinet have accepted that Modi had a preemption of the country’s condition in May-June and hence preparations were already underway right from February 2020 but they were kept under the wraps to prevent the spread of a panic among the citizens. Prior to the implementation of the lockdown, Indian government issued an advisory asking all states to follow social distancing as a primitive measure to contain the spread of the virus. Soon after, the use of face masks was made compulsory as another measure.
Travel and entry restrictions were put into order across the country which stopped the movement of people from one state to another or from one city to another. Land borders were sealed and a mechanism for physical scanning of citizens was introduced. The entire country was divided into 3 zones namely the Red, orange and green zone on the basis of the number of positive cases. PM Modi also announced a relief package of Rs. 150 billion for the healthcare sector. This aid was used for setting up testing facilities, PPE kits, ICUs and ventilators.
In the meanwhile, India faced the grave problem of large scale migration of labourers who wished to travel to their native states owing to the rise of unemployable situation. To bring a respite from this problem, the Union government decided to reopen the railway network in a phased manner in coordination with the state governments. This has till resulted in a smoother transport of migrant laborers to their native state. Also, students stuck across the country have been given the facility to travel to their homes by various state governments through the road transport.
Coming to the recent economic relief package of Rs. 20 trillion (20,00,00,00,00,000) under the ‘Aatma Nirbhar Bharat’ scheme by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this package is expected to provide huge boost to reconstruct the economic condition of the country as well as providing all possible support to each and every citizen of the country. This package ranges to almost 10% of the GDP and hence, is envisioned as the largest possible aid of its kind by any country. This package diverts its prime focus on strengthening labourers, farmers, MSMEs and the tax payers of the country as well. The package also aims to re-establish an economically supportive environment for the industries to restart their functioning and also help India’s in-house production. The package comes out with the clear motive to make India a self-reliant country and bolster its Make In India campaign.
Coming months are expected to witness further, the various decisions and measures taken by the Union Government to take the country out of the Covid-19 pandemic, rise to the occasion and become a superpower with the level playing field provided by these conditions.