Mahesh Trivedi for TwoCircles.net
With the Novel Coronavirus playing havoc and devil-may-care citizens throwing health advisories to the winds, the State government finally on March 23 shook off its slumber and extended the lockdown from five cities and a district (Kutch) to entire state till March 31. The BJP-controlled Gujarat govt’s order of a complete lockdown came after a prominent lawyer threatened to move the Gujarat High Court in an urgent public interest litigation against the saffron party’s Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation for its lackadaisical attitude towards safety measures.
The deadly virus has infected 471 people across India according to latest figures while the number of Coronavirus positive cases in Gujarat shot up from just two on March 19 to a worrisome 30 within four days what with the rare infection claiming the life of a 67-year-old man in Surat and local transmission–and not international travel–being responsible for five of the 12 cases reported in one single day on March 23. According to Dr Jayanti Ravi, principal secretary in the state health department, as many as 11,108 people have been home-quarantined and 224 others have been sent to mandatory government quarantine facilities, while 10 FIRs have been filed for breach of the quarantine protocol.
“The doctor-population ratio in India itself is mere 1:1,560 and the nurse-population ratio is 1:700 and there is only one hospital bed for 1,826 people,” said Diabetologist Dr Mayur Patel. As of March 23, 422 samples of suspected patients have been tested. From these, 30 have been found to be positive, 375 negative while results of 17 are awaited from a Pune lab.
In response to Modi’s appeal for a five-minute clapping and clanging of ‘thalis’ at 5 pm on March 22 to express the nation’s gratitude towards medicos serving Coronavirus patients, scores of his frenetic supporters not only gathered in large numbers in defiance of the social distancing advisory but also took out a rally, burst crackers and even danced on the streets as policemen simply winked at them. This time, in order to not leave anything to chance after witnessing how frenzied Modi fans in Ahmedabad brushed aside the curfew and thronged the streets on the Janata Curfew Day on March 22, the Vijay Rupani regime will keep four companies of Rapid Action Force and five companies of State Reserve Police Force on their toes to implement the lockdown and make sure the citizens remain indoors.
But as citizens try to observe the lockdown, in yet another controversial measure, the BJP government has decided to name and shame infected people by pasting eye-stickers outside quarantined homes–whose walls will also be sanitized–to caution visitors and passers-by.
Gujarat High Court advocate Iqbal Masud Khan told Two.Circles.net that while posh areas like Nehru Nagar were being sprayed with sanitizers on the Janata Curfew Day, little attention was being paid to eastern Ahmedabad having a dense population of the poor where such sanitization was more important.
“Heaps of garbage was seen even a day after the Janata Curfew in the old-city localities of Khadia, Jamalpur, Shahpur and the poorer suburbs Bapunagar, Gomtipur, Rakhial, etc.”, said Khan, adding that that such ill implemented anti-corona measures were being taken by saffron leaders only so that they can score some brownie points ahead of the next elections.
Even as a 1,200-bed hospital in Ahmedabad and two 250-bed hospitals in two major cities are being readied and hostels are being vacated in case the Coronavirus goes out of control, Ahmedabad municipal commissioner Vijay Nehra has admitted that the civic body would not be able to handle the crisis even if 2 per cent of the eight-million population of the city is affected because of not following self-isolation.
However, one silver lining among the Corona scare is that as educational institutions are closed, the Rupani regime has come up with a unique initiative to reach out to school students and ensure there is no academic loss amid the outbreak. Students of Classes 7 to 9 and 11 are able to revise and practise their subjects from the comfort of their homes using regional TV channels that began broadcasting daily hour-long tutorials, from March 19. “Less is actually more. Lesser the contacts with persons and objects, safer you are,” says neurologist Dr Sudhir Shah. He also encouraged staying at home with family as it not only increases bonds but also raises immunity.
To sum up, as Coronavirus threatens to penetrate deeper into Gujarat, one can only follow the advice of Dr Ronak Gandhi, Zen counsellor and founder of Loving Center for Transformation, “We are in a very difficult time right now. It is in our hands where we go from here. Each and every one of us is a decisive force.”