But new stream that came from China in October 2019 had been causing havoc in North America and several European nations above the tropic of cancer. Despite high incidence of infections including higher rate of fatalities for three months after it became pandemic the scientist community in the West had known very little about virus except the virus spread due to close human body contacts. Yet no nation resorted to lock up its people in their homes. The Indian Prime Minister had attended huge rally in America in Feb 2020 and the American president in Ahmadabad to be greeted by a huge rally on February 23.

The Prime Minister imposed the lock own order for all kinds of activities exactly 15 days after the Sangh annual rally at Ranchi. The major victims were the school going children because they were locked up in their homes as their schools were locked up. At the time 96 per cent children were going to school, a place where minds are made to imbibe realities of life. Merely tuitions or academic learning does not lead to formation of human mind. There is a wide difference between taught lessons and learning. Taught lessons are enforcement and learning is voluntary assimilation of new knowledge. Their class mates or others in the school present varied picture of their qualities, habits, and courage or lack of it in six hours every day for six days a week and for nine months.

Under the lock down children were compelled to be under the vigilant gaze of their parents for the whole year. Schools become, after the first ring, isolated empires without prevalence of the societal rules and regulations. Even though children in every school come from similar social class, each child is governed by its family values, disciplines, norms and rules. Honesty may prevail in every family and yet the value may differ. Elders often use their child to lie in order to avoid embarrassing callers on phone or visitors at door without being conscious of using their child to lie for their own sake. That is teaching the child to escape parental wrath through use of a lie.

How were the working parents to explain their being at home and entire family locked in like cowards to escape some wrath instead of fighting out their enemy? How did young parents of primary school kids explain in convincing manners their keeping the main doors locked to not only strangers but also to all others who had earlier walked in easily an spent long hours with them? Why social distancing was suddenly allowed to keep their cousins also at a distance or keep their play mates of years out of their reach or keep them out of their reach? As far off living helpers could not come due to absence of public transport facilities or the year, millions of middle class house-wives must have shed off lot of weight attending to house work they had not done for years. Despite monumental discomforts brought in by the year long lock down, few advantages also accrued as maintaining the physical cleanliness was acquired as a routine need. Habit of doing house chores became a normal practice for most Indians.

From the data given out of total number of suspected infections, positive cases of infection after medical verification and the fatality the most startling fact that stands out in corona virus was selective of its victims from among middle class families and mostly in economically advanced states. Poor in poverty ridden states were not largely affected or the governments of backward states did not properly report incidence in the state even though poor did not adhere y to the rule dictating maintenance of safe social distances. Even fatality statistics revealed 98 percent deaths were of old and overwhelming proportion among them were suffering from other fatal debilities.

More than eight millions had walked on their feet for days and long distances in groups to reach their birth places and no alarm bells of infections were reported ringing among them. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister had provided, in defiance of the directive that insisted on all vehicles off the roads except for emergency services, to ferry people of other Eastern states walking through Uttar Pradesh. The chief minister later claimed he was emotionally overwhelmed by plight of poor on their feet and laden with large luggage bundles tied to their backs and their young holding parents’ hands. The union government did not object to his humanitarian gesture though hundred s of thousand city dweller were booked for their movement outside their homes without proper masks.

Narendra Modi had won a clear mandate in 2014 on the basis of his promise to rapidize the economic growth to convert the Indian economy to be the super economy. After six years of rule, he could not maintain the Indian economic growth even at the same pace o his predecessor regimes. On the contrary he invited poverty to come in by imposing a lock down on all economic activities. 120 million lost their employment. 40 million could not stand on road sides to earn daily bread for their families. It included even cobblers who used to sit by road side, repair foot wears on emergency basis and carry half meals for their families in the evening. Similarly cycle rickshaw pullers lost their livelihood as they could ferry anyone. He directed all to be prisoners in their home like cowards instead of standing in the path of enemy to frustrate the aggression. On the top of it all, his office prompted his fan club to send messages on social media to declare him to be the best prime minister in the post independence era. Of course you cannot find a comparable humanfrom among 14 of his predecessors to have invited poverty to come in and save Indians.