Innholdsfortegnelse for May 18, 2020 i India Today

1 TERMINAL ENTRY Operations will resume in phases. To start with, only one terminal will be opened. At Delhi airport, passengers may enter the terminal using only the gate assigned to their airline, which will lead directly to the related check-in areas 2 CONTACTLESS TRAVEL In metro airports like New Delhi, passengers will be encouraged to use self check-in terminals 3 MANUAL CHECK-IN In the check-in hall, floor markers and queue managers will be employed to enforce physical distancing. Additional check-in desks or increased spacing between existing facilities may be implemented 4 SECURITY CHECK Security staff will have protective equipment like masks and gloves, and queues will be designed to ensure safe distance between passengers and staff. Security trays will be frequently disinfected, and medical staff will be available to…

Dilip Narayanan Nampi’s successful career in Dubai sank abruptly this March when the MNC he worked for handed him the pink slip in the face of losses borne during the coronavirus lockdown. The 40-year-old IT engineer, who is in Dubai since 2003, is hunting for a new job; his wife’s income, as an HR executive, won’t be enough, he says, to pull through in one of the world’s most expensive cities. “The pandemic has changed Dubai overnight. The barriers of class and status in the expat community have vanished. We are all at the mercy of the disease,” says a distraught Nampi. With hirings in deep freeze, the clamour to give preference to locals in jobs growing and the oil economies of the Gulf region in a bind, Nampi’s chances…

Suryakant Jadhav, 49, who works in a hardware shop, cannot hold back tears as he talks about the pall of fear hanging over Jijamata Nagar, a poor neighbourhood in South Mumbai’s Worli. Two of Jadhav’s neighbours have died of COVID-19. “They were being treated but did not survive,” he says. The 68,400 square metre neighbourhood is a patchwork weave of 4,500 single-storey houses. Before the pandemic struck, residents had been offered the hope of prosperity—two influential developers wanted to develop the settlement. Residents were told their homes, some as small as 10x12 feet, could fetch up to Rs 70 lakh. That’s enough to buy a 600 square foot flat in suburbs like Malad. In the past few weeks, however, those dreams have evaporated. Jijamata Nagar is a COVID-19 hotspot, a…

What is the stuff heroes are made of? If Norman Schwarzkopf, the United States army general who led the coalition forces in the 1990 Gulf war, is to be believed, “It doesn’t take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who go into battle.” As the Great Lockdown enters its 7th week and over half a billion Indians still remain confined to their homes, there is what Mahatma Gandhi described as “a small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in the mission” who have been working tirelessly behind the scenes to make our lives safe, secure and ensure that our daily needs are being met. And most of them are ordinary people from different walks of life…

PRADEEP DAHIYA, 35 HSVP ADMINISTRATOR, Faridabad COVID DEED The IAS officer’s HelpMe app streamlined relief disbursal and ensured delivery of services to the needy A mobile app that has now been launched statewide has made Pradeep Dahiya a star among the bureaucracy in Haryana. He developed the ‘HelpMe’ app to streamline relief disbursal in his district, Faridabad. After the March 25 lockdown, when the exodus of migrant labour began, Haryana launched a call centre to attend to the distress calls. “The information-gathering mechanism was manual. Many things were falling through. The initial idea for the app was limited to the call centre’s information management,” explains Dahiya. A 2013 batch IAS officer, Dahiya is currently administrator, HSVP (Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran) and additional director, Urban Estates, at Faridabad. When he was…

“I tell my men that it’s a huge opportunity to work to manage the COVID-19 crisis—a once in a lifetime opportunity” PRATYAYA AMRIT, 52 PRINCIPAL SECRETARY, DISASTER MANAGEMENT, Bihar COVID DEED In charge of the state’s response to the reverse migration, he leads the mammoth exercise of quarantining perhaps 800,000 people In the last week of March, as the national lockdown began, about 175,000 migrant workers arrived in Bihar’s border districts, demanding to be allowed to return to their homes. Before their arrival, the state government had wanted them to remain where they were. What was now required was an effective quarantine, a task that fell to Bihar’s principal secretary of disaster management, Pratyaya Amrit. He had already been busy, setting up screening camps and requisitioning schools and panchayat bhavans…

KULDEEP JUNEJA, 61 MLA, Raipur North COVID DEED Juneja marshalled Raipur’s various community groups to donate to help the poor It’s another day of the lockdown and Kuldeep Singh Juneja is busy on the phone. The Raipur North MLA is reaching out to the city’s community groups and entrepreneurs to solicit aid for the needy. Juneja, 61, commands widespread respect and those he contacts for help find it hard to say no. Like Mahesh Wadhwani, director of Raipur’s Mayfair Golf Club, who responded promptly to Juneja’s appeal and issued a cheque of Rs 11 lakh for the chief minister’s relief fund. He also contributed a truckload of rice towards rations for the poor. “When Kuldeep Juneja issued an appeal, we could not say anything but a yes,” says Wadhwani. “He…

SMRITI THAKKAR, 23 INDIA’S FIRST PLASMA DONOR, Ahmedabad COVID DEED Donated plasma to save other COVID-19 patients She may be just 23, but that didn't stop Smriti Thakkar from becoming, on April 25, the first plasma donor in the country to help others fight the disease she herself recovered from. On March 16, studying for an 18-month postgraduate course at the International Fashion Academy in Paris after graduating from NIFT, Gandhinagar, Thakkar noticed she had developed mild fever and cough. There was no response from the helpline number she called, and the doctor she made an appointment with the next day cancelled at the last minute. Frantic, she took the first flight to India, which, incidentally, was also the last flight out of Paris before airlines suspended operations. When she…

IMTIYAZ AHMAD BHAT, 53 JUNIOR ASSISTANT, Srinagar DC’s office COVID DEED Bhat beat all odds to ready 50,000 food kits to be distributed among the needy for Ramadan On March 18, a woman who had returned from Saudi Arabia and was hospitalised in Srinagar tested positive for COVID-19, the first such patient in Kashmir. The Srinagar district administration responded to the news with a hard lockdown. Confined to their homes, sections of the city’s 1.2 million residents grappled with shortage of food and essentials. A helpline set up by the administration to address grievances was flooded with complaints of depleting rations, particularly staple food rice. With the 30-day period of Ramadan just over a month away, Srinagar Deputy Commissioner Shahid Choudhary set his team on the job of readying 50,000…

WING COMMANDER HANSRAJ BHATT, 40; SERGEANT SUNNY PARMAR, 31 INDIAN AIR FORCE COVID DEED Ferrying relief supplies—medicines, essentials and passengers—across the country and beyond “Flying through a contagion is especially challenging because we are operating in unusual circumstances”—WG CDR HANSRAJ BHATT On the evening of April 1, Wing Commander Hansraj Bhatt began 'Operation Sanjeevani’, one of the longest missions of his 18-year flying career. Taking off from the Hindon airbase in his C-130J Super Hercules, he landed first at the New Delhi airport. He then criss-crossed the country—Mumbai, Madurai and Chennai—picking up six tonnes of medicines and essential supplies, before flying out across the Indian Ocean to the Maldives. It was nearly 30 hours before the aircraft returned to base in Hindon after delivering the relief supplies to India’s island…

KETAN RAWAL, 48 OWNER OF VANITY VANS, Mumbai COVID DEED Provided his vanity vans free of cost to police personnel on lockdown duty When NGO Project Mumbai called him in early April to help police personnel on the lockdown duty, Ketan Rawal, owner of the largest fleet of vanity vans in India, did not think twice. He made 19 of his 45 vanity vans—large buses designed to provide comfort and luxury to their occupants—available free of cost. The vanity vans, which he would rent out to big production houses during shoots for Rs 80,000-1 lakh per day, are now mostly stationed in Mumbai’s western suburbs, where the number of Covid containment zones is rising. Equipped with an air conditioner, washrooms and sofas, the vanity vans are a welcome refuge for…

MOHAMMAD SHAKIR RAZA, 41 FREIGHT TRAIN DRIVER, New Delhi COVID DEED Transports essential supplies during the national lockdown It was an exciting journey for Mohammad Shakir Raza, a freight train driver based out of New Delhi. He was set to drive his train to his home town, Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, where he would pass the baton on to his co-driver, who would then operate the train on the next leg of its journey, to Malda in West Bengal. Carrying a load of essential goods, Raza says he feels proud to drive his train from state to state, providing an essential service at a time when the nation is in lockdown. He knows that his job is especially dangerous in these times. “Our families are also worried,” he says, “especially…

Rakesh Paswan, a 30-year-old mason from East Champaran in Bihar, made a scarce living in the national capital region until the lockdown on March 25. Struggling with unemployment and hunger, when the shutdown was extended till May 3, he cycled 1,100 kilometres to go home. It took him a week. He is still quarantined in his village, but his family is determined that he will not return to the city. Meanwhile, factory owners in the cities are complaining of the shortage of labour. Saurabh Baweja, who runs a factory making home appliances, says there are over 2,000 such units in Delhi employing “a lakh or more workers from UP and Bihar, more than half of them are gone and the other half are looking to leave”. As the lockdown was…

In May 2017, the pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen, the dominant militant outfit in the Valley, saw a major split in its ranks with the breakaway faction threatening to eliminate separatists and the Hurriyat leaders who had the backing of Islamabad. It was then that the bespectacled Riyaz Naikoo stepped up to the plate, brought the Hizb back to centrestage with a series of dastardly terror attacks against Indian security forces. The outfit’s top leader since 2017, Naikoo was killed in a joint operation of the army, police and the CRPF on May 6 in his native village, Beighpora, in Pulwama district. The slain 34-year-old was the longest surviving militant commander in the Valley. A studious young man in his youth, Naikoo had a mathematics degree and, in a previous life, was…

Indian workers and students stranded abroad amidst the Covid pandemic heaved a sigh of relief this week as the government announced a plan to bring them back. The home ministry said that beginning May 7, they could return via special Air India flights—for a fee. The ‘Vande Bharat’ mission will run for a week, with 64 flights slated to bring 14,800 citizens back from 12 countries. These are the UAE, US, UK, Singapore, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Philippines, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain. Indians wanting to avail of the service must undergo a COVID-19 rapid diagnostic test. The home ministry will take a final call on the list of returnees. The ministry has released guidelines on who gets preference for travel—blue-collar workers, migrant labourers, women, children, senior citizens and those…

Om Prakash Gupta, 68, had fever and a cough on April 22. His test results had been mixed up, and it was only on April 27 that he got a call saying he had tested positive and that an ambulance would be coming the next morning to take him to the state-run MR Bangur Hospital in Kolkata. Till that time, he had been home, walking, talking and not complaining of any breathing difficulty. As had been arranged, the ambulance came to pick him up on April 28. He passed away that same evening in the hospital. His son, Raj Gupta, keeps asking how someone who seemed so normal could die so suddenly. Across the world, there is a growing realisation that COVID-19 is more than just viral pneumonia. It causes…

DOCTORS AT LNJP DELHI COVID DEED Working relentless shifts to save the lives of the Covid patients under their care, extending medical as well as emotional support They had met while studying for their post-graduation at the Maulana Azad Medical College, or MAMC, as it is better known. And got married only this January. Little did Dr Ishan Rastogi and his wife Dr Rash-mi Mishra know then that four months into their married life, they would be thrown together in a crisis that would consume all their waking hours. Both senior residents of medicine at LNJP (Lok Nayak Jaya Prakash) Hospital, the 30-year-old doctor couple scarcely get a moment to themselves while posted in the hospital’s Covid ward. It is only small consolation that they get to see each other…

“Initially, there were apprehensions, given everything we had heard about COVID-19, but it was our time to give back to society”—CAPTAIN MAJID AKHTAR CAPT. MAJID AKHTAR, 50; CAPT. VISHWAS RAI, 45 GOVERNMENT PILOTS, Madhya Pradesh COVID DEED The aviators are ferrying samples from MP to Delhi/ Puducherry for testing Usually their ‘cargo’ comprises of VIPs, but lately Captain Majid Akhtar and Captain Vishwas Rai, pilots with the Madhya Pradesh government, have been ferrying samples of suspected COVID-19 patients in their Super King Air B 200. The eight laboratories in Madhya Pradesh at the time (there are 14 now) were flooded with samples after there was a sudden rise in the number of cases in the state from mid-April, especially in Indore and Bhopal. The authorities decided to ramp up testing,…

“Now people welcome me with a smile and treat me as a friend. We have created a bond that will last forever” P. ASHA, 34 ASHA WORKER, Kasargod COVID DEED Monitoring home quarantined people and working at the hospital in Kerala’s worst-affected district The Covid pandemic has transformed Padaladuka Asha Rajakumaran’s life. An accredited social health activist (ASHA) worker in Kasargod district—the worst affected in Kerala with 179 of the 499 cases so far—she has seen lives and families upturned and also amazing cases of recovery in the past two months. Like the rest of the world, Asha had never heard of COVID-19 till about three months back. An ASHA worker in her neighbourhood of Thalangara village, she took the job two years ago. “I was born in a poor…

“The poor are like our family. We must care for them just as we care for our dear ones” SARVESH TIWARI, 33 TRUCK DRIVER, Nagpur COVID DEED Ferries foodgrains from Nagpur to Covid hotspot Mumbai twice a week. On his return, he brings lubricants from HP depot at Reay Road in Mumbai Every time trucker Sarvesh Tiwari leaves his Nagpur home to ferry goods to Mumbai, his wife motivates him to do his best. She reminds Tiwari that his work is no less than a service to humanity, at the same time advising caution when he passes through Mumbai’s Covid-afflicted areas. Tiwari, who is employed with the Mumbai-based Rajguru Transport company, takes around a quintal of rice, wheat and pulses from Nagpur to the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) mandi…

“A member of the core group receives a food package every day so we can assess quality and quantity”—R. RAMARAJ KVN FOUNDATION K. GANESH, JUGGY MARWAH, VENKAT K. NARAYANA AND R. RAMARAJ COVID DEED The foundation provides meals for stranded migrant labourers and others who have lost their sources of income in the lockdown In this time of the coronavirus pandemic, three friends in Bengaluru have joined forces to try and make a difference. To date, the campaign they began—Feed My City—has provided 2.8 million meals across Noida, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. The three friends are serial entrepreneur K. Ganesh of Big Basket, Fresh Menu, Tutor Vista and Hunger Box; Juggy Marwaha, executive managing director at JLL India, and Venkat K. Narayana, CEO of the Prestige Group. They launched…

S. NEMATH HUSSAINI, 22 COVID AMBULANCE DRIVER, Hyderabad COVID DEED Does 24-hour shifts for the city’s Corona Specials ambulance service On alternate days, over a 24-hour stretch, Syed Nemath Hussaini is at the wheel of an ambulance outside Care Hospital in Hyderabad’s upscale Banjara Hills. He is one of the drivers of the Corona Specials that city-based ambulance service provider StanPlus launched to meet the medical emergencies after the lockdown. “The corona-virus is a threat to the entire world, and I am doing my bit,” says Hussaini, who volunteered for the 24-hour shift. He brushes aside arguments of friends and fellow drivers about it being a risky job. “Call him God or by any other name, it is he who protects and decides what happens to each of us,” emphasises…

ADEEL AHMAD KHAN, 38 CHAIRMAN, Azadpur APMC Mandi, New Delhi COVID DEED Kept Azadpur mandi—amajor supply hub of fruits and vegetables for north India—open Despite the lockdown, Adeel Ahmad Khan, chairman of the Azadpur Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) mandi in Delhi had no option but to keep India’s largest fruit and vegetable market up and running. Spread across 83 acres, with 3,000 registered wholesalers and 20,000 labourers, in normal times, this market sees daily footfall of more than 100,000 people, with daily trading of fruit and vegetables in the region of 12,000-14,000 tonnes. It also oversees the work of the vegetable and fruit market in Okhla, a major supplier of Delhi’s daily essentials. Aside from supplying the needs of the National Capital Region, the Azadpur mandi is also a…

JCT MILLS TEXTILES MANUFACTURER, PHAGWARA, PUNJAB COVID DEED A major player in the government's effort to produce PPE kits. India is now the second largest manufacturer of such equipment With sirens piercing the still of the night, a police jeep carrying a sealed box came to a screeching halt outside the air cargo terminal at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. Some distance away, an officer from the ministry of textiles was anxiously pacing up and down. On the tarmac, an aircraft had its engines running, waiting to take off. Receiving the box, the official ran to the aircraft. Inside the box was the first sample of a personal protection equipment (PPE) kit made entirely in India, being rushed to the South India Textile Research Association, Coimbatore, for testing.…

Nothing cheered Indians more than the reopening of standalone liquor shops after 40 days of the Great Indian Lockdown. The risk of corona was no deterrent, it would seem. The masks were on, but caution and physical-distancing protocols were thrown to the winds. City after city reported serpentine queues outside booze shops, even as memes, pictures and videos flooded social media. And it wasn’t just individuals who welcomed the opening of these floodgates; India’s states greeted the move with equal enthusiasm. Liquor comprises a sizeable portion of their excise revenue—Rs 1.76 lakh crore in FY 2019-20, 16.5 per cent higher than in the previous year. To some, it brought back memories of the long queues during demonetisation. Maharashtra rolled back the move within a day even as Punjab chief minister…

Dr. Panchagunula Jayaprakash, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, has designed a FACE SHIELD embedded with 3D printing technology. During this pandemic that has led to an unprecedented global crisis, this face protection devised to protect users from the Novel Coronavirus, is made available at the minimum rate of Rs. 20 per Face Shield. This face mask alleviates the limitations of the regular masks currently used by doctors, policemen, and journalists. The regular masks barely cover the nose and mouth, whereas the Face Shield will be able to protect the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears so that one cannot get infected by the virus. Some of the medical and police personnel who use the N95 masks suffer from facial irritation, making the Face Shield a comfortable and more effective alternative…

GANESH REDDY, 50 CEO & SECRETARY, CITIZEN FOUNDATION, Ranchi COVID DEED Helping citizens of Ranchi follow social distancing norms Even after the country went into lockdown from March 25, Ganesh Reddy, who runs the Citizen Foundation, a non-profit organisation in Ranchi, Jharkhand, noticed that people in the city were just not following the rules of social distancing while stepping out to buy groceries and other essential supplies. “I realised that since we had no vaccine, the only way to stop COVID-19 was through social distancing. Staying away from each other was key,” says Reddy. “So, I decided to make a pictorial presentation of the minimum distance required to be safe from the infection.” “The Citizen Foundation believes in filling gaps in services instead of conventional relief methods” A school dropout,…

“Even if we get injured dousing a fire, our family members are safe. But with Covid, the whole family will suffer”—PRABHAT RAHANGDALE MUMBAI FIRE BRIGADE PRABHAT RAHANGDALE, 55 CHIEF FIRE OFFICER COVID DEED The brigade’s jawans have sanitised a 17,000 km size area in the city Prabhat Rahangdale, chief fire officer of the Mumbai Fire Brigade (MFB), was mentally prepared when the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) asked him in March to take up a mammoth task. Mumbai had just registered its first COVID-19 positive case and the BMC wanted to sanitise the nooks and corners of the city. The MFB has 2,700 personnel; 160 of them were chosen to participate in the sanitisation work. The fire brigade had proved its mettle in the past, rescuing people in calamities like the…

VAISHALI GHULE, 41 NURSE, CIVIL HOSPITAL, Nashik COVID DEED A maternity nurse, Ghule served a 14-day stint in an emergency COVID-19 ward This question from her 10-year-old son left Vaishali Ghule gutted: “What is the need to stay there, aai (mother)?” Ghule, who was set to join work as a staff nurse at Nashik Civil Hospital on April 26, had just informed her family—her 75-year-old mother-in-law, her husband, Madhukar, and her sons, Tanishk (10) and Yash (15)—that she would have to stay in the hospital for a fortnight. The hospital management had decided to ask several nurses to put in extra hours as the number of patients admitted had swelled from 10 to 300 in a week. She explained to her family that with the coronavirus spreading, health workers had…

SAVITRIBAI PHULE PUNE UNIVERSITY COVID DEED Launched an initiative to mobilise over 60,000 students in Pune to assist neighbours and society during the lockdown Sneha Dhatrak, resident of Rajgurungar near Pune and a student at the Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering, has been spending her lockdown mornings helping 15 families in her housing society. “I taught a neighbour to pay her electricity bill online and helped others order groceries on WhatsApp,” she says. Her college mate, Saurabh Kumbhar, delivers milk packets to an elderly couple living next door. Like them, 60,000 students from 800 colleges affiliated to the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) are spending their lockdown assisting at least 10 families in their neighbourhood as part of an ‘adoption programme’ launched by the SPPU’s national service scheme (NSS), a…

FAIR PRICE SHOP OWNERS COVID DEED Working, despite aggression from the public and disruption in the supply chain, to ensure needy get ration When Anil Mahajan, who works at a fair price shop in Kapurthala, Punjab, refused to give free ration to four people whose names were not included in the government provided list of beneficiaries, things turned violent. The men viciously attacked Mahajan, who later succumbed to his injuries on the way to the hospital. In the course of the lock-down, several instances of violence against fair price shop owners have been reported from across the country—Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana, among others. No other state, though, has reported a death. There are 500,000 fair price shops across India, through which 8.1 million targeted beneficiaries in 195…

TELANGANA SIKH SOCIETY COVID DEED Supplying rations and cooked meals and extending medical aid to poor Sikhligar families If we work, we get to eat. That’s our daily life. We buy scrap iron, paying up to Rs 30 a kilo, shape it into pots and pans and sell them at Rs 40 a kilo,” says 25-year-old Shankar Singh, sitting outside his tin shed tenement at Ghatkesar, 20 km east of Hyderabad. Singh’s measly monthly earnings of about Rs 9,000 had started to dwindle ever since he suffered an injury in February, and came to an abrupt end once the lockdown began. Singh, his wife and four children are among the 4,183 poor Sikhligar families—mostly migrant blacksmiths—scattered across Telangana who make a living out of hammering iron sheets into utensils or,…

COLONEL RAJESH ADHAU, 46 IN-CHARGE, NARELA QUARANTINE CENTRE, DELHI COVID DEED Manning the quarantine centre where 400 Covid patients are undergoing treatment Colonel Rajesh Adhau knows a thing or two about war. He was decorated with a Sena Medal (Gallantry) for serving as regimental medical officer of the 13 Jammu & Kashmir Rifles regiment during the 1999 Kargil War. He accompanied troops into battle, as they mounted frontal assaults on to enemy held heights, saving casualties in the ‘Golden Hour’. Today, Col. Adhau is on the front lines of a different war—against the COVID-19 pandemic. Col. Adhau commands a field hospital in New Delhi and is also the executive officer of the Narela quarantine centre, Fourteen Towers constructed by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) there have been converted for housing…

In a black sweatshirt, with a potted plant and gentle ambient music in the background, Jay Shetty exhales audibly. Opening his eyes, he addresses the thousands tuned in to Day 20 of his live streamed daily meditation session: “And when you breathe out, with your lips slightly open, really feel the breath come out, hear it,” he says, as live comments pile up, hailing Shetty, thanking him for providing a restorative routine in the midst of a global pandemic. What started as a “random experiment to serve, support and help” has already crossed 10 million views and is now into its second 20-day run. Shetty, a motivational speaker, podcaster and coach with 35 million-plus followers across social media platforms, has built a brand around trying to transform people and companies…