Watching the unmanageable crowd outside the liquor shops is highly distressing in the Corona times. Even a layman would agree that the government should not have allowed the liquor and wine shops to be opened at a time when the war against Corona is in full swing. God forbid if the booze crowd becomes the super spreader of the virus then one shudders to think of the consequences. The entire exercise of the lockdown will be tossed in the air and everything will come to nought.
This is for the first time in the known history of humankind that any pandemic has enveloped the entire world. Even countries with very sound economies are puffing and panting and have not been able to contain the virus as successfully as India has done. From that standpoint, India has certainly done remarkably well to flatten the curb of Coronavirus. While in any other country the people would have chastised those, who claimed that virus could not harm because Allah was with them. Such persons should have got a rap on their knuckles and sent to jails but not in India, where they get the open support even from those who boast to have the monopoly over wisdom. Their policy is that people may go to hell, but they will oppose the government.
I feel that those who have been working in the 'generation and distribution' of electricity deserve to be given the heroic honour of the Corona warriors. It does not mean to belittle the stupendous work that is being done by the Army, Police, Doctors/ Nurses, or the suppliers of the essential commodities during the period of this unprecedented calamity. But think of days without a regular supply of electricity in this twenty-first century when the population of the country is nearly is 135 crores. That too when all villages and every household have got an electric connection. In cities, which are like the jungles of concrete, where houses are small and multistoried, life without electricity would have been, no less than, a horrible hell. The Work from Home concept would have been impossible. Lights, fans, air conditioners and other gadgets would have been useless. Television, Netflix and other sources of information and entertainment would have been a mirage. The life would have gone back to the dark ages. Laptops, computers and Mobile phones, which are'like an office in the pocket', would not have been charged in the absence of electricity rendering them totally useless. Therefore, no amount of words would be able to describe the importance of electricity and the contribution of those who are managing it. The government did well to honour the Corona warriors by showering flowers on them but the personnel in the electricity department also deserve the same honour as other warriors.
Life in the time of Corona has been extremely hard and frightening. Those who have little resources to survive, and the number of such hapless persons is exceedingly high, life for them is really horrendous. The predominantly large number of people in this country is hand to mouth and therefore it is too much to expect to have saved enough to sustain in this long period of forced holiday.
All said and done, life in rural areas is not as much bad as it is in the urban areas. That is why there is a rush of people going back from cities to their villages. This Coronavirus has proved all the top sociologist and social thinkers of the country wrong, who have been regularly mouthing against the villages. So much so, even Baba Saheb Ambedkar had disapproved the villages because he considered them to be the centres of feudalism and symbols of backwardness. Therefore, the process urbanization must be accelerated.
The policy of rapid urbanization has been vigorously followed in last more than seventy year after independence. Now we realise that the rural areas are like a bulwark against such catastrophes which we pray should never happen. But should we not give more importance to villages, which have been denied to them so far?
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