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Indians are not only tired of the yearlong lock down but exasperated by the year long jam of their life with threat of another long jam threat as the government appears to be toying with the proposal as it reads a threat of new form of corona virus. People do not want to live through another spell of the long term Lock down. The Indian medical text books of 1950 do mention existence of the corona virus and the rhino virus in India.

Amidst the din over farm bills, the BJP government (it should no longer be called NDA since there are no ministers from any coalition parties) has deftly manoeuvred the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill 2021 through both Houses of Parliament. It’s the BJP’s trademark now to introduce bills at short notice and then have them sail through without much discussion about their import.

The emerging global image of the Indian democracy is of an “electoral autocracy”. The central government is making this charge appear more realistic with some of its decisions. For example, on 28 March, the President gave his assent to the Government of National Capital Territory (Amendment) Act, 2021.

In 1947, Paul Robeson, the black icon of America said he would give up his career for two years to ‘talk up and down the nation against prejudice’. Does ‘prejudice’ sound a familiar word in today’s India? April 9 is the birthday of this great actor singer who was born in 1898 and died in 1976. He sang about race, poverty and the persecution in America and in many countries of the world in the last century.

The fear of the lockdown has returned almost after a year to haunt the migrant labour again. The chaos like the last year is yet not surfaced this year, but it does not mean people are less fear stricken. It is because the relocking of the economy and the means of transportation are progressing slowly unlike the sudden lockdown last year that left little means of escape. This time, migrant labours are leaving their workplaces without great chaos but in large numbers for their homes. The crowds in the railway stations and trains, bus terminals and buses etc reveal this fact. There will soon be acute shortage of labour if the trend continues, and the economic recovery may be reversed.

When Elizabeth Warren a contender for American presidentship had proposed a progressive wealth tax during her campaign for Democratic Party nomination, 18 American billionaires had come out in support of her proposal; one cannot recall or even imagine any comparable behaviour in the Indian context. This is not because the American, or more generally Western, capitalists are particularly kind or generous towards those whom they exploit. It is because of their belief that the undisturbed functioning of the capitalist order in their countries requires a degree of concern on their part for the poor; it is a matter of their own easy survival.

The second wave of corona virus is sweeping India virtually paralysing people’s lives in many states, especially Maharashtra leading to night curfew and lockdown in large parts of the virus affected districts. The threat of prolonged lock down is looming large if the wave goes on intensifying. Migrant workers in Delhi and Maharashtra are already panicky and they will be heading to their home states once again if the virus situation does not improve.

As the second wave of COVID-19 in India is becoming grimmer, politics in the country is becoming uglier. The most objectionable was the attitude of the centre to treat the spread of the pandemic as godsend opportunity to implement whatever they want to, violating the very democratic and federal structure of the country. Their attention is divided considerably away from tackling the crisis in the right earnest to somewhere else. Now the centre has stooped too low and blamed the four worst affected states and their citizens for the unprecedented daily spike in corona cases and active case load which were about 1.27 lakh and 910,000 on April 7, 2021.

With the second wave of the Covid-19 infection unfolding, India is facing a calamitous situation. April 4 saw the breeching of the 100,000 mark (one lakh) in daily cases with 103,709 cases recorded. Three days later, on April 7, the count reached the highest so far of 126,260 new cases – the highest daily count in the world. The death rate is also mounting.

In the grim context of a second wave of covid infections spreading throughout the country and nervous sense of foreboding, Reserve Bank’s latest monetary policy is admirably anchored in pragmatic optimism. This is good for a struggling economy and hopefully should be borne out by events.