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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala, which is locked in a grim battle against the dreaded corona virus, is plagued by a daunting variety of problems.

In response to a survey conducted by the Health Ministry, 44% of respondents have said that they have reduced their food intake or miss one meal per day. Only one third of the respondents said that they received any relief in kind or cash. India has a work force of 54 crore people out of which about 50 crore are in the unorganized sector, among them those who are not covered under any statutory social security schemes are almost 40 crores and who get no benefit from any schemes of the government. In this situation of lock down the workers who are stranded and unable to go to their home are faced with serious food crisis. Even the children of the workers are not getting meals. Milk, which is the most essential for the growth of children is a dream for them.

As we are close to the second phase of lockdown that ends on May 3, two things are crystal clear. The first is that the COVID-19 is to stay with us for a long time, and the second is that the people of the country cannot lock themselves in their homes for such a longer period. People need safety from the disease and hunger both. They must, therefore, learn to live safe with the disease in the post-lockdown era, and the government must respond with four groups of strategies to deal with the new situation.

World leaders, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, have praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his timely decision to enforce a national lockdown to fight the Covid pandemic. Europe and the US have had to pay dearly for their failure to act at the right time.

Cuba’s medical mission has been recommended for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of its efforts in the fight against the global Covid-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 has taken a shape of pandemic. It is being fought like a war. Entire Indian society and economy has been put under serious stress on account of this. There is problem everywhere including both rural and urban areas with regard to it. Abrupt imposition of lockdown in the third week of Mach 2020 compelled thousands of casual workers to march toward their villages, to which they originally belonged. A number of such workers have even died on the way to their villages. Why did they decide to leave the cities and head for their homes, despite there being no transport and the village often hundreds, even thousand kilometres away?

‘Headache’ is a brand new Covid-19 symptom discovered with “chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat and new loss of taste or smell,” says the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These are in addition to fever, cough, and difficulty breathing. The last one spells the end of the road –at least to the elderly with co-morbidities. For them to be put on ventilator is death sentence.

For nearly a week, the home ministry’s team has been moving around the districts and cities of West Bengal collecting evidences of the failure of the Mamata Banerjee and her government in tackling the spread of the deadly coronavirus. However if the official sources are to be believed it has not succeeded in its mission to collect clinching evidences which could help their political master Amit Shah to nail down Mamata government.

May Day is a day of celebration. It is celebration of labour and labourers who are the creators of the wealth of the nations. It is a day to demonstrate the strength of the working people, alliance of workers and peasants, unity of the trade unions and labour movements and to express solidarity nationally and internationally.

There is an exodus of finance from the third world at present, far exceeding in scale what had occurred in 2008 after the financial crisis. Even more important than the actual outflow is the desire on the part of finance to pull out of the third world, including even the so-called “emerging markets”, and move to US dollars or dollar-denominated assets. This is resulting in a depreciation of a host of third world currencies vis-à-vis the dollar, of which the Indian rupee is an obvious example.