‘Lockdown not an on-off switch’: Rahul Gandhi asks govt to spell out post-May 17 strategy

Congress chief Rahul Gandhi stated on Friday that the federal government wants to inform the individuals about its technique to open up the nation in addition to the financial system after the Covid-19 lockdown ends on May 17.

“The government now has to give a little bit of transparency on its actions. We need to understand, when they open, what is the criteria for that, what are the boxes they want ticked off before they actually start to open,” Gandhi stated in a digital press briefing.

“The lockdown is not a key, that you switch it on and it’s gone. It requires number of things to happen. It requires a psychological change. The government needs to understand that it’s not an on-off switch,” he added.

The former Congress president additionally talked concerning the coronavirus illness Covid-19, which has triggered the nationwide lockdown. He stated that barring a couple of class of individuals, the illness isn’t harmful.

“The disease is dangerious for a few categories of people. It is dangerous for old people, for those who have diabetes, hypertension etc. But other than that, it is not a dangerous disease. So we have to make a psychological change in the mind of the people. Currently, people are very scared. The government, if it wants to open up, will have to turn this fear into a sense of confidence,” stated Gandhi.

He added that opening up must be a transition. “You need to have a strategy.”

Gandhi has been holding discussions with public intellectuals by way of video conferencing the place he has been speaking about Covid-19 and what India must do going ahead. Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan and Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee had been his first two visitors.

Two days in the past, Congress president Sonia Gandhi had requested the central authorities to spell out its technique whether or not it would elevate or proceed with the nationwide lockdown on May 17.

“What after May 17? What criteria is the government using to judge how long the lockdown will continue?” she had stated in her opening remarks at a video-conferencing of occasion’s chief ministers and senior leaders.

Addressing the assembly, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stated, “We need to know, as Soniaji said, what will happen after the lockdown 3.0? Soniaji has already pointed out. CM’s need to deliberate and ask as to what is the strategy of Govt of India to get the country out of lockdown?”

The occasion had just lately introduced that it’ll pay for the prepare journey of stranded migrant employees, a transfer that triggered a slugfest between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Opposition occasion accused the federal government of being insensitive to the plight of stranded migrant employees whereas the BJP claimed that railways was bearing 85% of the fare value, and state governments needed to pay 15%, thus permitting migrants to return house freed from value.