Monday morning and the newspapers differ on their respective leads: It’s a toss up between the deaths of five security personnel in J&K (The Times of India, The Indian Express), Delhi opening up (Hindustan Times) and 20 Indian districts with the heaviest coronavirus case load (The Hindu).
After a very long time, The Times Of India does not have a Covid-related lead story, yet this comes at a great cost: in “Col, Major among 5 martyred’’, the paper reports, “Leading from the front in the Army’s best traditions, Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, a decorated commanding officer of a Rashtriya Rifles battalion, along with a company commander, two other soldiers and a policeman laid down their lives in a fierce encounter with terrorists at Chanjimulla area of Handwara in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district on Saturday evening.”
Back on the Covid front, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had a message for everyone: ‘Time to reopen city, have to live with corona..’
TOI says that Kejriwal citing Delhi’s economy “in doldrums, revenue collection at rock bottom” and almost no money to pay salaries to government staffers as reasons to relax lockdown in the city. “He appealed to the Centre to let the containment zones remain sealed and make the rest of the city — now fully a ‘red zone’ — a ‘green zone’ and allow markets to reopen from Monday.”
And did you know, ‘In some analysis, 13 urban sprawls account for 2/3rd of India’s cases, deaths’? According to TOI’s analysis, “Nearly three-fourths of all Covid-19 cases and deaths reported in India have been in the country’s 35 largest urban agglomerations (UA), with two-thirds of cases and deaths being in just 13 of them.”
Here’s a heartbreaking story, ‘Man who gave dignity to dead loses life after 5 hospitals turn him away’. TOI reports on Khalid Ali Shaikh who worked at a cemetery, dying due to medical neglect: “Breathless with depleting oxygen levels, a 52-year-old Dongri man died after allegedly being tossed around from one south Mumbai hospital to another. Calls to 1916, the BMC helpline, yielded no concrete response.’’
The Indian Express also leads with the news of the eight-hour gun fight in J&K.
Read the touching account of Pallavi Sharma, the wife of Col. Ashutosh Sharma, who died in the encounter in, ‘He promised he would come soon…’
Express says she “feared the worst” as she hadn’t been able to contact him since Saturday night “when so much time passes… you know something is wrong’’, she told the newspaper. The Colonel is survived by his wife and 12-year-old daughter.
The paper’s second lead, …. small services stare at the end of the road’ notes the fate of cafes, salons and other MSMEs amid the extended lockdown. For them the most difficult question is will there be enough demand to keep them viable?
From Mumbai comes the account of a 34-year-old Mumbai doctor who has been booked for sexually assaulting a Covid-19 patient. The story ‘Mumbai doc booked for ‘sexual assault’ of Covid patient, confined to home’ notes that the hospital says it has sacked the accused.
In the Delhi edition, Arvind Kejriwal is the lead in Hindustan Times: ‘Unlock Delhi, we’re ready: Kejriwal’. The paper reports, “Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal asked the Centre on Sunday to lift the lockdown in the Capital, underlining that both the government and citizens will have to learn to live with the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), and that the lockdown – while necessarily – was now causing a grave economic crisis.”
In some bad news from top industry brass, ‘CEOs see 40% revenue dip in June quarter: Poll’. HT says, a snap poll by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) found “Two-thirds of Indian chief executive officers (CEOs) expect a 40% revenue decline in the quarter ending June 30..’’ because of the nationwide shutdown for the coronavirus.
The Hindu‘s lead story is “Central health teams to monitor 20 districts with heavy case load”. The paper reports, “The Centre has announced the formation of Central Public Health teams to investigate 20 districts in 10 States which have registered the maximum cases.’’ These include some of the largest cities in India — Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Delhi.
The paper also had a photograph of a helicopter showering medical workers in Mumbai with flowers for their services. The caption read, “A Navy helicopter showering petals on the medical staff of INHS Asvini in Colaba, Mumbai, on Sunday as part of a nationwide exercise to express gratitude to frontline COVID-19 warriors”.
The New Indian Express’ lead ‘Clarification creates confusion’ criticises the Ministry of Home Affairs’ latest advisory Sunday. MHA had said relaxations to inter-state movement of migrants are only to facilitate “distressed stranded persons” but the definition of a distressed person could confuse state governments NIE points out.
And the reason Chennai has been included in the Centre’s 20 most potent Covid districts is the statewide tally which spiked to 266 Sunday, says ‘Koyambedu is once again cause for spurt’. The reason for the spurt was Koyambedu market, believed to be a growing hotspot.
In ‘Sloppy work in 20 hotspot dists: Centre’, the daily notes the Centre’s “deep concerns” regarding the “ballooning” of Covid-19 cases in 20 districts including Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Central Delhi. Nine of these are “short on medical infrastructure” and eight have a fatality rate greater than the national average, it notes.
The Mumbai daily’s lead story focuses on “Mumbai’s best doctors at the frontlines — Crack team of nine doctors treats city’s most critical cases”. The paper reports, “On Friday, doctors treating Covid-19 patients at Nair hospital gave a virtual high-five to nine doctors…’’ after their suggested treatment helped improve the condition of two patients in their fifties.
The nine doctors are on a special task force set up by the state government to “closely monitor and suggest treatments for the city’s most critically ill Covid-19 patients… In the past two weeks the team has overseen 10 such cases…”
In its lead, Mint notes the distressing situation of almost 10 million Indians stuck in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region. In 2019, they sent more than $82 billion back to India as remittances but that is about to dry up given the “dual shock of the covid-19 pandemic and the plunge in oil prices”.
In an analytical piece ‘How govt can roll out a stimulus without upsetting rating agencies’, the daily suggests how India can pull up its socks even after three global rating agencies slashed forecasts for the country’s GDP growth. A road map for reforms and a large stimulus that are “transparent on fiscal health” could be the answer, suggests the paper.
In a rather dry lead, Business Standard reports that despite further relaxation on lockdown rules, India Inc is on a “wait-and-watch mode to restart manufacturing and service operations or ramp up production”. Companies with huge inventories, especially in the automobile industry, are “hesitant to open up when there’s no sign of demand growing”.
The paper almost congratulates Karan Bajwa, who has been managing director (MD) of Google Cloud in India for over a month, for the company’s huge surge in cloud computing. Amid global lockdowns, the use of cloud computing products and services “that power video conferencing, online gaming, and streaming television” has gone up. According to Bajwa, “There is immense openness in terms of embracing technology.”