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Two predecessors of ’Boris Johnson’s had to bow out of the office of prime minister as they could not come up to the expectation of the Britons and also failed to keep their promises made to the people. Theresa May’s premiership was wrecked by Brexit, and Gordon Brown was eclipsed by the financial crisis.

Earlier this month, Sidharth Varadarajan, one of the leading journalistic voices against the ruling government, was served with an FIR based on a retracted tweet. He was asked to appear 650 km away in the middle of the central lockdown due to coronavirus to answer his charges. Similar actions were seen based on a single tweet (or rather retweet) against other prominent voices of dissent, such as lawyer Prashant Bhushan and former civil servant Kannan Gopinathan. But these events are not isolated incidents. The ruling government has been carrying out a systematic suppression of dissent at a scale not witnessed in recent years in India.

Georgians did not fall over each other to storm restaurants and barbershops Sunday. The move to reopen Georgia to trade and business failed. Eateries, which asked their ‘stay at home’ employees to report for work, had nobody at the tables to wait on. Georgians refused to fall for the politician’s bait. Americans, waking up to fresh Covid-19 deaths, are not in the mood for a ball at noon and dine-out in the evening.

Smile on the face of the patient is a matter of great satisfaction for a doctor. This gives a feeling of being triumphant over the disease, a feeling which gives confidence and motivation to carry on the work further. But there are failures too. Failures and errors are part of any profession. Every failure is a challenge to introspect, to find the causes of the failure and to set them right to do better next time. In the medical profession every case is a challenge. This is because we treat humans, and humans have emotions; every person has a different emotional background and buildup.

Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi must have realized by now that he had overstated his case by asserting that India is “heaven” for Muslims. The Union minister for minority affairs was evidently fielded by his bosses in the BJP to counter the charge being levelled by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) about India’s “Islamophobia”.

Lockdown, global stock market collapse and negative bottom line of both large and medium enterprises are now engaging cash-rich Chinese predators to be on the prowl to take over ‘good looking’ assets as sinking corporate valuations are turning attractive for aggressive investors. Earlier this month, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and China Investment Corporation (CIC) had reportedly asked bankers to scout for good investment opportunities in the financial services sector. Together, the two funds are looking to deploy around $600-650 million through the purchases.

While CSR money can be donated to the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund), no such contributions of CSR funds can be made to ‘Chief Minister’s Relief Fund’ or the ‘State Relief Fund. The author argues that this undermines the federal nature of the Constitution and compromises the ability of the states to deal with the pandemic.

The poor and daily wage labourers are not only the work force to bear the brunt of the coronavirus, the urban middle class which has been the passionate admirer of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah is also on the verge of losing its status and shine with the job market shrinking fast across the globe.

The winter of Corona crisis is far from being over. No green shoots seem to be appearing anywhere across the globe as yet. The Director-General of World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has already pressed the panic button saying that the “worst” of the novel Corona virus has yet to come. The WHO further asserted “it’s a virus that many people still don’t understand” He compared the present situation with the outbreak of Spanish Flu that occurred a century back and killed 100 million people. True the statement of Ghebreyesus needs to be given a serious thought.

Forget caution, India should rapidly ease the Covid shutdown to revive the economy. Otherwise it may suffer the worst of both worlds – economic collapse without checking the virus. At the Princeton University webinar last week, economics Nobel laureate Angus Deaton did not mention India by name, but he highlighted the danger of poor countries getting the worst of both worlds.