What if Punjabi and Odia had swarmed the streets and opened businesses? Was Capt. Amarinder Singh’s and Naveen Patnaik’s words enough to disregard the contagion’s potency to infect with droplets?

As it is, all states have now extended the lockdown till April-end. But it’s hard to guess which state took the cue from the Modi Government and which from Odisha and Punjab; i.e., an independent decision.

Not all states are in total tandem with the PMO. Earlier reports, however, spoke of almost all chief ministers accepting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership in the fight against Covid-19.

Republic TV let that canard fly high. And if it was a cuckoo, Arnab Goswami did not let the dogs of war out at primetime! Goswami is PIB and DAVP combined. An HMV record, quite effortlessly rendering yeomen’s service to the Government of India in this hour of need.

Post Covid-19, Goswami must be named a corona-warrior. There should be a massive ‘award wapasi’ campaign in his honour. A programme that should put to shame earlier ‘award wapasi’. Goswami deserves a chance to redeem himself. For far too long, ‘award wapasi’ had been on the point of his sword.

It’s not just Goswami. The Indian media are cut straight down the middle. There’s the so-called ‘Godi Media’. and there’s the alleged ‘Lutyens Media’. Arnab Goswami is not a ‘Lutyens Media’ celeb. That honour goes to his friends who are no longer his friends.

Media should get out of its coronavirus trance. It should engage in in far more versatile reportage. Not just remain content and contained by reporting only corona. Viewers cooped up 24/7 want news and views that go beyond and behind coronavirus. Keeping a count of corona-rendered stiffs doesn’t make for flexible news coverage.

Now, we also have to worry about Dharavi. Maharashtra cannot dream of lifting the lockdown. Not as long as there are 381 hotspots in Mumbai. One of them Dharavi. People are suddenly talking of community transmission.

And the curve is not flattening. There are too many hotspots. But why are some state leaders and TV analysts talking of partially lifting the lockdown? What do these gentlemen want? More COVID-19? Let’s not forget the coronavirus knows us pretty well. But humankind cannot state the same. Man in mask lying next to the ventilator is still trying to get his head around the lump of protein called coronavirus.

And when we count the dead numbers The Grim Reaper is taking home every day and night in a shroud of Covid-19, it is depressing. After Italy and Spain, it’s the turn of the USA to bear the brunt. The daily dead in the US are to the tune of 1900. Americans have no immunity. And over 20,000 of them are dead so far.

That said, some people have a sixth sense. At the local supermarket in Pune the other day, ‘Fat Family’ – father fat, mother fat and daughter fat – invaded a supermarket. Total damages: Rs 45,000 in bills. All of it spent on groceries. Fruit and vegetable. Butter. Frozen meat and canned fish.

Did the family smell a lockdown extension? Does somebody in the family have a sixth sense? Covid-19 has all of us in a blue funk. Our panicked reactions are revealing. If somebody is buying the supermarket, somebody else is coughing out corona.

But it’s when groups get infected that real panic sets in. even otherwise death has lost its suddenness. Nowadays, death comes and goes. Casually regularly. Death stalks hospitals and death constricts chests. Death is corona!

In Navi Mumbai and neighbouring localities, such as Nerul, nobody is afraid of the coronavirus. An employee at the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee died the other day. Now, APMC stays shut, good and proper.

But Navi Mumbai residents flood the streets from 9am to 5pm. Before 9am and after 5 pm, anybody found outdoors are hauled to police stations and fined. Strange are the ways of municipalities. It has nothing to do with lockdown and corona.

The journalist who told the 9 to 5 pm story lives in Navi Mumbai and he’s thrilled seeing so many people breaking self-imposed social distancing. He is an Anand Margi and the Anand Margi considers himself immune to any and all viruses.

That being said, never has a central diktat been fingered and tinkered with by state satraps so much. The proliferation of political power centres is confusing. But ‘Waiting for Modi to do something’ is also not the solution. (IPA Service)