GENRE: Report

They are a part of Shimla’s invisible corona warriors, the 260-odd sanitation workers who maintain the hill town’s 280-km sewerage network. “For the world, corona may be a novel virus, but we are exposed to infections and other health hazards every day,” says Attar Singh, a sewage worker, “though we do take due precautions to stay safe.” This, as they try and keep Shimla’s 2.3 lakh citizens safe from infections that lack of proper sewerage infrastructure and treatment can cause, including COVID (as recent news reports suggest). Thankfully, Shimla town has not had a single positive case so far. Attar…

Odisha has just added another first to its credit. While others are only talking about putting money in the hands of people, chief minister Naveen Pattnaik announced an Urban Wage Employment Initiative (UWEI) scheme to help the informal work force in the state’s 114 urban local bodies. The initiative envisages immediate execution of all labour intensive projects in the ULBs in the state, with an allocation of Rs 100 crore, including Rs 10 crore to the Bhubaneswar Municipal corporation, to be spent on wages of workers working on these projects during April to September. The state government’s Urban Development and…

They are just a statistic, as they have been for decades now. The survivors of Bhopal’s killer gas tragedy. And if the deadly gas made them and their children victims of lifelong illnesses, the coronavirus threatens to literally kill them off, by denying them what little medical treatment they were receiving at the only hospital specifically set up for treating gas victims, the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre (BMHRC). On March 23, a government order suddenly turned BMHRC into an isolation and treatment centre exclusively for coronavirus patients. The treatment of 80 gas-affected patients admitted there was abruptly stopped…

With just 170 positive cases of coronavirus disease in the state, Bihar as a whole and Patna in particular (barring the two contamination zones of Khajpura and Sultanganj) are comparatively well suited, when it comes to relaxing lockdown rules to enable some economic activity as per the Centre’s guidelines. But whatever partial relaxation has been allowed has brought little relief to the poor of Patna, which is not surprising given the many inconsistencies in the guidelines. For instance, the guidelines allows plumbers, electricians, carpenters, daily wages workers and highway dhabas to ply their business. But with all other shops being…

Having coming up with a three-stage lockdown exit strategy which got much countrywide acclaim, the state government in Kerala abruptly withdrew some of the lockdown relaxations it had announced, causing some confusion and chaos. As per the relaxation proposed by the state government, people were allowed to go out in their private vehicles on odd-even number basis in the Orange B and  green categories starting April 20th.  There were proposals to allow barber shops to open and function. Hotels and restaurants were allowed to  open and permit customers to dine at the hotel from 9 am to 7 pm. Both…

“I am having to do things today I have never done earlier.Waking up  at 6 am in winters and 5 in summers has long been my habit. First thing I would do is offer morning prayers, earlier in masjid, but now at home. A 20-minute physicial workout has been a part of my morning schedule but I have never had to rush to the market in the wee hours. But since the COVID-19 enforced lockdown in Srinagar, I rush to the market soon after my morning exercise to buy vegetables, bread, milk and grocery items as the market remains open…

The  strains of music from the neighbour's house can be heard, the flavour of baking from another wafts in, while another neighbour calls to ask if I wanted bread as he has decided to brave the odds and venture out to get some. Had there not been a lockdown, street traffic would have blocked the music, my neighbour would not be baking, and getting groceries would not have been akin to an adventure trip. Ambavadi area, where I stay, is considered one of Ahmedabad’s upmarket areas, comprised of bungalows and some of the city’s oldest housing societies. The area also…

Apprehension grips the agricultural heartland of Punjab as the new Rabi crop waits to be harvested. Labour shortage in the farms due to the coronavirus lockdown is, of course, a major worry. Farmers are clueless on what is in store for them, once harvest begins on April 15th, the date fixed by the state government. “I have not faced conditions of this nature in my entire life, nothing is sure anymore,” said Jagseer Sandhwan, a farmer owning 15 acres of land in Sandhwan village of Faridkot district. The government has set a procurement price of Rs 1925 per quintal for…

Left with few options to prevent the spread of the virus, the Telangana police have intensified lockdown procedures by imposing a 7 pm to 6 am curfew in Hyderabad. The government is working to ensure that the city’s 5.4 lakh people below poverty line (BPL) (as per 2017 govt data) -- of which 4.3 lakh are in the core city area while the rest live in surrounding municipalities -- get adequate relief. Immediately following the Prime Minister’s speech on March 22nd, Hyderabad saw a sudden exodus of people desperate to reach their villages in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and other states.…

The first week of the national lockdown passed off peacefully in Assam and north-eastern states without a single positive case being reported. But the next three days saw a sudden spurt in positive cases, as news of the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Nizamuddin in Delhi hit the national headlines. Panic gripped the state when on March 31st, the government announced that a 52-year-old Muslim cleric, a diabetic and cancer patient, had tested positive at the Silchar Medical College. The cleric, who runs a Madrassa at Badarpur in southern Assam's Karimganj district, 300 km from Guwahati, had travelled to Delhi and…