Govt’s myopic view of Covid-19 brought hardship to relatively safe rural India

A clear prejudice and bias among policymakers against rural areas through the current lockdown in the fight against Covid-19 virus has become obvious. This is starkly evident from the Central government’s mapping of Corona hotspots spread across the country. These warrant stricter lockdown than the areas that the government calls as “non-hotspots” butwhich are still thought to be susceptible to the continuing scourge of the virus.

Out of a total of 720 districts spread across the country the government has identified 170 hotspot districts and another 207 as non-hotspots. This leaves out nearly half of the total number of districts, or 343 to be precise, that have thus far fortunately escaped the wrathful onslaught of the virus. Somehow, most of these largely safe districts are predominantly rural.

These figures were revealed on Wednesday, April 15, with a great deal of caution and without going into finer details by Lav Agarwal, joint secretary, Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. Following this, a Union Home Ministry higher up released detailed guidelines to be observed through the lockdown, or until May 3, for the “containment” of the virus alongside lifting of certain restrictions to allow limited economic activity beginning from April 20, “particularly outside urban areas”.

So as per the government’s assessment, vast rural areas in mostly Northern States have thus far not attained alarming levels of contagion’s spread though these may still be susceptible. Thus, these areas could not become what the government calls to be hotspots, meaning they have so far remained out of the fastening grip of the virus in many cities.

Yet, the first round of the three-week-long lockdown took the entire country into its sweep without any relaxation. This turned out to be particularly harsh to the rural belt of the country that is inhabited by generally poor people. Often they are solely dependent upon agriculture. And their farm produce are mostly perishable. Thus, the lockdown that came around the time of harvesting of the main Rabi crop has proved quite costly for the rural populace as the government took time to make up its mind to relax the total ban on all activities in case of thus far relatively safe rural areas from the attack of the virus.

The government’s latest assessment shows that in case of Bihar that has 38 districts only a single, or Siwan alone, is among the list of hotspot districts. Similarly, only 11 districts out of a total of 75 in Uttar Pradesh are severely affected to deserve government’s strict containment norms. Thus, economic activity and more so those related to agriculture could have been allowed much earlier in districts where Corona cases were not found to be as active as in big metros that top the list of hotspots.

This is also true in case of some of the southern states like Tamil Nadu where 22 out of a total of 32 districts in the State have turned out to be Covid-19 hotspots. These are also called as under red zone unlike the non-hotspots that are designated at the state level and in media reports as orange zone.

As against these two zones another, or green zone, indicates areas that have generally remained unscathed so far by the outbreak of the virus. Vast rural areas of the North come under this. But it remained unacknowledged until the other day when the government spelt out the area-wise assessment of the extent of the reach made by the Coronavirus. It could spread only after being brought from outside the country by air-travellers. The government obviously woke up late to check on the entrants with the virus; and once it did it had already started spreading.

The government unwittingly missed the time to contain and confine the virus to cities that have international airports, or seaports. Soon after the lockdown the administration was grappling to control hordes of poor people who set out for their homes, leaving their workplaces in cities.The poor migrant labour was feared to become a vehicle for the transmission of the deadly virus and, thus, had to often face the wrath of the police. Yet, the government’s own assessment has ended up in indicating that the poorer rural parts of the country are safer from the virus than cities like Delhi and Bombay, or their neighbourhoods, that migrants often tried to flee from.