In Gujarat, district collectors are going round to verify whether employees and workers were paid their wages by the establishment owners of their work. No one explained from where the owners would assemble cash needed for wage payments. With their works halted due to the lockdown and their inability to move their rolling stocks as all markets are also closed. As movements are restricted, they face difficulties in raising temporary credits from banks to pay wages. I do not include the human instinct for safe play in bank managers that is additional difficulty in the way of getting immediate payments. In addition are physical difficulties of non availability of cheque books locked in offices and restrictions on movements of authorized signatories in most establishments. The administration has not taken into consideration the practical difficulties though officials are keen to ensure the implementation of the government directive to pay wages and salaries despite cessation of all activities for production and sales of produce to fetch money.

The restricted mobility of officials in large units and lack of ready cash in small units stands in the way of implementation of goodwill directive of the government to ensure the employees unable to attend to their work due to the lockdown clamp were paid their due wages to ensure they did not go hungry because of imposed restriction on their movements. The directive will ensure payment of wages now or later in the year after politicians overcome their dread of the pandemic virus will be effective but only in the organized sector.

But what happens to daily earners in the unorganized sectors like small roadside traders or workers who constitute nearly 40 million in numbers including cobblers on roadsides? Other 20 million play their vehicles for ferrying the people in their eight hourly shifts, or in the marketing chain for roadside vocations or goods transporters, mathadi workers? How will the government ensure that landless agriculture workers be paid for work they could not perform due to the lockdown? No Prime Minister could have thought of several such pinpricks. One cannot ignore the immediate issue of school fees for new terms for their children. The municipal corporations, committees and Zilla as well as taluka panchayats would need to provide funds to their managed schools to make up for delayed fee payments by students to ensure teachers and other staff members are paid their salaries in time.

The vegetable sellers kept their road side trade from their hand driven vehicles but not road side eateries and tea shops serving food to poor sections, pan biri vendors on roadside. They had to keep their business closed for the lockdown periods as they were of course not considered essential services. They did not defy the directive as they knew that people caught in fear psychosis would not dare to come to provide them sufficient business to make their defiance and their risk worthwhile.

They appear to be minor problems for the middle class but they make the difference between life and death for these classes. The middle class person’s thinking may not cover such minor detail; politician cannot afford to miss even microscopic detail. They have always to keep example of far sight that Mahatma Gandhi used to get every class of people without differentiating their economic strength or lack of it, their religion or placement in society when he launched the national movement known as the salt Satyagraha in 1931. Every human cannot miss salt in his or her daily eatables. So he picked on salt to move masses into the freedom struggle. He did not worry over opinion of or evaluation by the western world. He was fearless for he wanted people to yearn for their right to decide their rulers and we call it the democratic system. Such men are rare and it turns into a fear psychosis when the rulers seek foreign approval instead of bold alternative to guide people from immediate danger.

At the time of the launch of the Salt Satyagraha, only 10 per cent Indians were literate, now 84 per cent are literate to provide a booster to the efforts to fight the curse of the pandemic virus and succeed with courage and determination. Instead Indians were made cowards to hide in their homes, cease living normal life with abandon precautions to desist from public contacts. Instead the medical teams were put to use not knowing fully how the virus worked. Yet India did better for people desisted in their daily routines from contacting others. The government arms should have also realized the precautionary detention in homes would also breed mistrust in hearts of all others.

In India every year eight lakh persons die either due to old age or other incurable diseases. Earlier in 2004 six and half lakh children below the age of three year used to be dying due to diarrhea without Indians even realizing it. India successfully fought menaces of small pox and polio that used to take heavy human toll each year. Corona virus whether deliberately exported or not was much easier an enemy to fight.