Living with Covid-19

In the fourth phase of the lockdown, one is repeatedly hearing the voices both from the government and others as well as from the World Health Organization that seem to express the inevitability of living with the virus. Such grim expression may draw its sustenance from the impending danger of people dying of hunger that may result from the lack of unemployment, should the lockdown continue in its current form. Such expression, though worrying, in an immediate sense, seeks to individualise the responsibility involving safety from the virus. Such voices would thus expect every individual to behave with utmost responsibility if the latter wants complete protection from the virus.

Living with the virus, however, flies in the face of official claims that are simultaneously made by the government to ensure the people that the country is medically as well as infrastructurally well-equipped to deal with the virus. The rising graph of the disease has led the central as well as state governments to adopt a more flexible approach involving policy moves that seem to be moving back and forth in terms of handling the crisis on an every day basis. The recent announcement of the economic package might be seen as a step forward inasmuch as it seeks to enthuse some confidence into sectors that are worst affected by the crisis. However, such an affirmative thrust appears to be loftier only in the absence of the acknowledgement of the limits that both the central as well as some state governments seem to be hiding from the public eye.