Kohli was run-out and Australia grabbed the upper hand. That, however, isn’t the headline from Adelaide. It’s that India, with its players in white, is back playing test cricket, with all its pace and turn, before real crowds. It’s another step closer to life as we knew it before Covid.
Govt findings on missing Covid cases should neither scare us nor lull us into complacency
Government analysis showing India’s missing 90 infections for every confirmed Covid case isn’t surprising. These are asymptomatic cases. South Asia and rest of Asia have done better than the West on infections. More research is needed on undetected infections. The findings should neither scare us nor lull us into complacency.
SC must spend time on completing hearings on anonymous electoral bonds, instead of farm protests
Supreme Court’s intervention in farm protests is disappointing, but fits a pattern of wading into the executive’s domain, delaying what’s in its own remit. The time wasted on farmer protests or the 1975 Emergency proclamation is better spent on completing hearings on the anonymous electoral bonds, postponed since April 2019.
One salutes the honourable apex court for upholding and reiterating the farmers’ right to protest peacefully, taking care not to impede essential movement of people and goods. Taken in a wider context, the oral observations of the learned CJI are heartwarming. In recent times, the space for peaceful protest and public expression of dissent have shrunk dramatically. With the onus cast on the citizen to prove that she is not being propped up or financed by sinister forces inimical to the national interest. One hopes courts all over the country will draw inspiration from today’s proceedings in the SC.
There is a vast gap – 1 : 90 – between what the tests and the serological surveys have been showing, ever since June. For one, they trash the incredible claim that there was no community transmission. For another, they raise serious doubts about the wisdom and efficacy of the overnight national lockdown that was no less than an ICBM strike on the economy. A better understanding of the science underlying the pandemic would have suggested better ways of dealing with it, given the size of the country and our economic limitations. Since each Indian is a – life and death – stakeholder, all the information that was flowing to the government (s) ought to have been shared with the public. To end on a happy note, if the number of Indians who have been infected is far higher than one crore and the figure of lives lost, about 1.45 lacs, is truthful, then it means Covid is less lethal than we thought.