Modi Govt Lifts Coronavirus Lockdown Partially Without Medical Inputs
Since Modi has lifted the coronavirus lockdown restrictions arbitrarily without getting any scientific inputs, India will suffer more fatalities and face serious economic consequences.
By Rakesh Raman
The Indian government headed by Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi has partially lifted the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown even as the devastation caused by the virus is increasing exponentially in the country.
According to news agency Reuters, some shops and businesses opened in rural India on Monday (April 20) as part of a staggered exit from lockdown, while coronavirus infections rose by more than 1,500 over the previous day.
Since Modi is behaving as a Hindu sect preacher instead of a wise leader, he is taking random decisions without any scientific support to deal with the disease.
Working in an autocratic manner, Modi has ignored the welfare of citizens while the coronavirus cases in the country are believed to be in hundreds of thousands, and thousands would have died in the past couple of months.
Although the Modi government claims that as of today (April 20) there are only 17,000 cases and 560 deaths, these are ridiculously wrong figures. In fact, independent research reports suggest that the actual number of coronavirus cases in India are close to 1 million and thousands have died.
[ Covid Health Bulletin Covers Global Coronavirus News and Views ]
But the Modi government is deliberately hiding the truth and releasing wrong, negligibly low figures about coronavirus cases in India. In order to falsely project Modi’s performance in combating coronavirus, the government is giving some random, off-the-cuff numbers about the disease.
Earlier – like a dictator – Modi had announced a sudden coronavirus lockdown for 21 days on March 24. While Modi’s blind followers had thought that coronavirus will disappear as Modi had asked them to burn candles and hit their kitchen utensils, Modi’s totka (superstitious mischief) did not work.
The scientists warn in their report that despite the 3-week-long lockdown and curfew, India may have up to 13 lakh (1.3 million) cases of COVID-19 by mid-May. At that stage, it will not be possible to stop the contagion and the lockdown exercise will go futile.
Instead of using the lockdown period to improve the healthcare infrastructure for conducting proper tests of suspected cases, Modi wasted the time in giving some useless lectures to gullible Indians.
Now, there is hardly any facility in India to carry out all types of tests to count the coronavirus cases and save lives. Apart from the diagnostic tests to determine whether a person is sick with coronavirus, the antibody tests and nucleic acid tests are essential to measure the impact of the disease in a particular area.
An antibody test finds if a person’s blood that the immune system makes can fight with the infection. And nucleic acid tests are used to confirm if a person is infected with virus.
Since Modi has lifted the coronavirus lockdown restrictions arbitrarily without getting any scientific inputs from all types of tests (including diagnostic tests, antibody tests, and nucleic acid tests), India will suffer more fatalities and face serious economic consequences. And for all this impending calamity, Modi alone is responsible.
By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of a humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society. He also creates and publishes a number of digital publications and research reports on different subjects.
