Articles by Vijaya Pushkarna

Delhi has no COVID war room. But the capital had become the centre of attention in the fight against COVID-19 when on June 9th, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia estimated that Delhi, groaning under an acute shortage of hospital beds, would need over 5.5 lakh beds by end July. A shocked public, the city administration, hospitals and even Union Home Minister Amit Shah stepped in. The BJP at the Centre and AAP in Delhi called a truce as they joined hands to deal with what was becoming a crisis in the capital. Their crisis management efforts finally yielded some positive results. At 10.25…

Vaishnavi Bhardwaj’s ‘school’ is her dadi’s pooja room. And her classroom is her Dadi’s smartphone. Every Monday-Friday, 9-year-old Vaishnavi is ready to ‘go to school’ by 9 am. Her mother Rashi makes sure that the fourth standard student at a private school in East Delhi has all the required text books and note books ready in time for her morning class prayer, signalling the beginning of her day in school.  Schools in the capital began for the new academic session on July 1st with technology driven classes over the Internet and on television. Private school students like Vaishnavi, every morning wear…

Rini Simon Khanna, whose presence and voice are part of most events of substance in the national capital, recently moderated the  United Nations Global Compact’s “Regional Perspectives on Leadership for a Global Crisis: Asia Pacific”. The same evening, she also moderated the launch of the Global Nutrition Report 2020. With one major difference from the past: the well-known former television anchor moderated both these events online. “Most events are already happening online,” said Rini. “Now, all work will be segregated into that which needs F2F (face to face) attendance or physical presence, and that which can be done through online platforms. These events…

Pre-Covid, Delhi's crematoriums used to be littered with heaps of withered marigold, broken bits of earthen pots, tetrapac containers containing ghee and mineral water bottles. Today, even as COVID has made cremation of bodies a challenge in itself and sharply restricted attendance at funerals, the garbage dumped at these sites is becoming dangerous -- consisting mainly of biomedical waste as people carelessly strew their PPE body suits, masks, gloves, shoe covers etc that they wore to the funeral. Such are the proportions of the problem that on June 22nd, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation slapped a Rs 50,000 penalty on the Arya Samaj…

With the Delhi government ramping up testing, the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the city is creating new records almost on a daily basis. There is also a group, including some medical professionals, who feel that the virus will eventually get to each of us, or at least most of us, and we should just stay prepared and reasonably cautious, without getting into panic mode. So how shall we manage and what can we expect, if we test positive for the virus? According to the new rules announced by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on June 22nd, home quarantine…

At 10 am on June 10th, Delhi government’s Corona Dashboard showed a total of 9021 COVID-19 beds, of which 4873 were occupied and 4148 were vacant. The availability of ventilators was 494 with 262 being used and 232 lying idle. These are figures as updated by the Central and Delhi state government and private COVID treatment facilities. And this Dashboard pattern showing about half the beds lying unoccupied has been there for the past many weeks. Yet, recent days have seen social media bursting with stories of patients going from hospital to hospital in search of a bed and being turned…

Subrata Das, a 65-year old resident of Chittaranjan Park, suffered a cardiac arrest. The family called the police, all the emergency services they could think of, but no one turned up. Finally, they managed to get one private ambulance and went from hospital to hospital, but none would admit the motionless patient. “We weren’t sure if he was gone,” his daughter said in a post in which she described the way they were treated at one of the hospitals, “like animals.” It was a neighbourhood doctor who finally pronounced Das dead and issued a death certificate stating that he didn’t…

Ordering the summary closure of all colleges and schools till May 3rd was easy enough. As was converting government schools, like the ones in Najafgarh zone of Delhi or in Agra district of Uttar Pradesh, into COVID quarantine wards or shelters for migrant workers. What will not be easy, though, is to dispel the uncertainties plaguing the minds of parents and students on what the new academic year will hold for them when it starts. Especially students whose 12th class board exams were abruptly interrupted, with no indication of whether and when they will resume; how the college admissions process…

It is the best of times and the worst of times for police around the country who have been ordered to enforce the Prime Minister’s nationwide lockdown, with images and videos of police behaviour, swinging from humane to violent playing out on TV screens and smart phones in every home.   Take the case of Bhairon Lal Lohar, for instance. A furniture dealer in Thane near Mumbai, Lohar received the news of his mother passing away in their village in Rajasthan’s Rajsamand district and as the only son, wanted to go to his village to cremate her. A Shiv Sena leader arranged an…

Baisakhi, the harvest festival, falls on April 13th. Fields across the country have turned a glossy gold with the Rabi crop—largely wheat, mustard, chana and barley, to be harvested in Punjab, Haryana and UP where it will begin during April 15-20. Only this time, machines, not men, the traditional backbone of Indian agriculture, will handle the harvest. As their vegetables lie unpicked and abandoned, farmers are worried how they will harvest the wheat, who will fill the jute bags with grains and load them on to the tractor trolleys, and who will unload them at the mandis, and above all, who will…