Editor,
Apropos the news item, ‘Top medic wants Meghalaya sealed’, (ST April 12, 2020), I was expecting the State Director of Health Services or infectious diseases expert/s or public health experts to advise the state. It was surprising that your reporter had to get in touch with someone who is not in Meghalaya now (wonder if he’s ever been here) and someone who is not an expert on this disease/public health. Publishing such news may confuse the public. It would be prudent if only news from official sources/qualified experts are published.
Besides, this is the time when each state should individualize the approach according to the local situation, rather than follow one solution for the entire nation.
Yours etc.,
A concerned citizen
Name withheld on request
Farmers exploited amidst lockdown
Editor,
A week back, amidst the COVID-19 lockdown, a farmer and his son somehow managed to reach the town near Rilbong point with just two sacks of cabbages and some bunches of green coriander. What predicament pushed the father-son duo to rush to town with their harvest certainly has raises many poignant questions. Let’s leave this aside for now. The shabbily dressed young boy assisted his father in selling the coriander. The father on his part tried to woo customers to buy the cabbages. I purchased three bunches of coriander from the boy though I did not need so much.
I learn that each of the two sacks contained approximately 50 kg of cabbage and he was expecting to sell them at Rs 25-30 per kg. It was already midday but he could not sell his produce as there were many other vendors like him. Finally one retailer approached the farmer. The retailer bargained hard and finally offered to buy the two sacks of cabbage containing approximately 100 kg of cabbages at Rs 12 per kg. The farmer had no option as it was getting late and he had to return to his village so he had to short-sell his produce. He sold off the two sacks of cabbages for Rs 1200. Imagine what he would have done with the cabbages had the retailer not bought them off him.
I don’t know much about this farmer but what I can gather is that he has not received even the minimum “labour cost” for bringing his harvest all the way from the village to the town.
Let me estimate his basic labour cost. It must take at least one whole week of two persons’ day-long-labour to produce 100 kg of cabbage in 3 to 4 months. If we consider one-person’s wages per day at a minimum of Rs 150 then the total labour cost for 100 kgs of cabbages comes to Rs 2100. Here I have not included the cost of the seeds, manure and various risk factors like pests or a storm that could have damaged the farmer’s crops. Yet the farmer was able to sell his produce at a throwaway price of Rs 1200 for 100 kgs of cabbages. This is an example of what happens to every farmer. Is this justified? I see this as a brutal injustice. Rather it is a travesty of justice and good governance that we have no mechanism in place to protect our humble farmers from being exploited by urban folks. What’s more, the same cabbage at the same time was being sold by the retailers at an exorbitant rate of Rs 45-60 at certain retail junctions in a locality. The question is how long shall we put the fate of the humble farmers at risk due to the lockdown?
Yours etc.,
Salil Gewali,
Shillong
Trump plays the blame game
Editor,
The World Health Organisation (WHO), the US President Donald Trump and the Chinese government must share the blame for bungling and messing up the situation that developed following the Covid-19 outbreak. The diatribe between US President Donald Trump and the WHO, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus over who is really responsible for the spread of the coronavirus worldwide has been raging on for a while.
The US President is actually trying to shift the blame to someone else. He is trying to escape blame for what he did. In fact, he mishandled the Covid-19 pandemic. He disregarded the damage that the pandemic might inflict on America and Americans. Even amidst a health crisis Trump never misses an opportunity to project himself as a great leader of a vulnerable nation. From the beginning Trump misled the country about the dangers of the coronavirus outbreak. He reassured the public that there was nothing to worry about. He insisted that the pandemic was under control. In reality, he was driven by sheer ignorance and arrogance than by wise statesmanship. He failed to fully understand the implications of the coronavirus outbreak and prepare the country to reduce the dangers. Trump failed miserably to control the spread of the virus. As a consequence, thousands died and thousands are infected.
To further cover up his failures Trump attempted to shift the blame to China and accused it of being responsible for the pandemic; his European allies of failure to stop the outbreak and the WHO of responding late and conveying wrong information. Trump claimed that it was he who shut down travels from China before the coronavirus outbreak became a pandemic. However, investigations reveal that 430, 000 people from China travelled into the US, including from Wuhan after Beijing made the outbreak public.
Trump has slammed the WHO for its failures and for being China-centric in its approach to the coronavirus outbreak. It is a fact that the WHO has failed in dealing with the outbreak appropriately. It trivialized the seriousness of the outbreak. It claimed that the coronavirus isn’t capable of human-to-human transmission. Further, it was slow to declare Covid-19 a pandemic. It is true that WHO has shown a bias towards China. The WHO does not include Taiwan as a member. It would not acknowledge Taiwan’s success in managing the coronavirus spread. It is said that it treats Taiwan in this way to please China. WHO also opposed restrictions on travellers from China? This was at the behest of the Chinese government.
The Chinese government is also at fault for mishandling the outbreak. China now faces international vilification for its cover-ups, lies and repression. It is true that the Chinese government tried to cover up the magnitude and severity of the outbreak in Wuhan for a month. It did not disclose the actual number of deaths from Covid19 in Wuhan. If it had conveyed the accurate message to the whole world about the virus outbreak, the impact of it on the rest of the world could have been minimised.
World leaders and leaders of global organisations must be more responsible and efficient in managing health crises. They must realise that now is not the time for a diatribe when thousands of people are dying from the virus and thousands are getting infected. The focus of all must be to save the lives of people.
Yours etc.,
Venue GS,
Via email