Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his second virtual meeting on Saturday, discussed India’s lockdown playbook and seemed to agree upon further two weeks long extension, urged by CMs of several states including Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejrival and Punjab’s chief minister Amrinder Singh, keeping in view ‘social-distancing’ the only effective way to curb the spread and appealed nation a strict adherence to the lockdown.
Hinting at the dilution of nationwide lockdown, Prime Minister Office (PMO) has said center will shortly come up with the guidelines for the gradual lifting of lockdown. It can’t be lifted in one go, as he had earlier made it clear.
India may have a decentralized lockdown strategy ahead.
Plan may involve dividing areas into green, orange and red zones depending upon the exposure risk to the disease.
Cautioning states about the gravity of the situation ahead, Prime Minister Modi stressed upon the need for online training portal to train para medical staff across all states.
Modi also suggested the idea of lock-in wherein industrial, agricultural and construction workers may be housed within their work zones itself and continue with their work as people can’t be kept away – from work for an indefinite time.
However, life has got priority over economy, he assured citizens both ‘Jan’ and ‘Jahan’ will be taken care of.
Stressing upon the need to ensure harvested crops does not get affected because of lockdown, he has kept agriculture out of lockdown for India’s food security, however, mandis must not be crowded. Registered repositories can be seen as deemed markets as farmers will not have to travel to sell.
In addition, the chief ministers also asked for special concessions for industrial and agriculture sectors on urgent basis.
Prime Minister ensured raw material for industry will be taken care of and stated government’s plan to have beds with oxygen facility, apart from ventilators as no. of hotspots and infection clusters have risen to 284, wherein no. of infections reached above 7000 and that has costed more than 250 human lives so far.
Prime Minister Modi also encouraged people to download ‘Aarogya-Setu’ app which is designed to determine if one has been near a covid-19 infected person or not with the help of smartphone’s GPS and will be helpful in future to issue e-passes.
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