In his address to the nation this morning, PM Modi announced that in the view of the coronavirus outbreak in the country, the lockdown in the country has been extended by 19 days till May 3. The decision to extend the lockdown was taken after reviewing how the country fared in containing the virus in the last 20 days of lockdown.
PM Modi reasoned that in the absence of a vaccine or an antidote to the novel coronavirus, the nationwide lockdown remains the only efficacious method that drastically reduces the potency of the virus and prevents the country’s public health system from being overrun. PM Modi added that even advanced countries such as Italy, Spain, The US and China, which are in the thrall of the coronavirus, have no option but to enforce stringent restrictions and extensive social distancing measures to blunt the spread of the contagion.
However, even at this critical juncture, so-called liberals managed to find a way to ridicule the Modi government. Blinded by Modi hatred, they quoted a 15-days-old claim made by the Cabinet Secretary regarding the extension of the lockdown to assert that the decision to extend the lockdown was taken unilaterally by the Prime Minister and that the Cabinet Secretary was not kept in the loop before making the announcement.
Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba on March 30 said that he was surprised to see reports of the lockdown being extended doing the rounds in the media. March 30 was barely a week after the three-week nationwide lockdown was announced. Moreover, it was also two-weeks prior to the 3-week deadline. As any logical person would say, it would be too soon to announce an extension of lockdown with 2/3rd of the time period left.
However, after PM Modi declared today that the lockdown will be extended till May 3, liberals deceptively quoted Gauba’s 15-days old statement to contend that he was unaware about the decision made by the PM today.
Alt News co-founder, Mohammed Zubair, known for having a chequered history of sharing fake news and making dubious assertions, quoted the ANI tweet from March 30 and mocked Cabinet Secretary Gauba stating if he is still surprised by the decision to extend the lockdown. It is important to note that here Zubair is alluding that PM Modi took the decision of extending the lockdown on his own without consulting with the cabinet or the healthcare authorities.
Pro-Congress bot ‘Sonali Ranade’ shared the same old ANI tweet to deride the Cabinet Secreatary. “Our Cabinet Secretary is so well informed,” the bot tweeted.
Congress leader Jaiveer Shergill made a stunning fool of himself by sharing the tweet from March 30 where in Cabinet Secretary expressed mild surprise over the reports of lockdown extension. Comparing Cabinet Secretary’s consciousness from March 30 to the decision to extend lockdown made after 15 days, Jaiveer alleged that there is no coordination between different leaders in the Modi government and mocked them for asking people to express their gratitude and solidarity to the healthcare, emergency and police officials involved in battling the coronavirus on the front lines.
Former student leader associated with Congress, Angellica Aribam, also quoted the same tweet saying one should never place his/her trust in bureaucrats.
NDTV journalist Nidhi Razdan too partook in criticising the Cabinet Secretary for not being clairvoyant enough to have known about the lockdown extension in the foreseeable future. She quoted the old tweet with a maxim- “Never say never”
Another so-called journalist, Radhakrishnan RK, who could not find as basic a thing as when the tweet was posted, quoted the old tweet to claim Gauba, being the Cabinet Secretary of the Government of India, has no clue about the lockdown extension.
Perhaps, according to the ‘liberal’ wisdom, a country’s response to a pandemic should be entirely static, with no dynamic component in it. This explains why they fell over themselves to share an obsolete tweet from the last month to claim that the Cabinet Secretary of the Government of India was completely oblivious of the lockdown extension announced by PM Modi this morning.
The scourge of coronavirus in India, as well as across the world, dictates the governments to remain agile and nimble while confronting the contagion. The coronavirus has a potential to rapidly ravage a country, evident from the catastrophes witnessed in Italy, Spain and currently in the United States. In fact, the danger the virus poses is best illustrated by the alarming rise in the number of cases in India by a ‘Single Source Event’- Tablighi Jamaat congregation which catapulted India almost to the brink of disaster.
When the nemesis is invisible, insidious and incurable, one needs to calibrate his decisions dynamically, based on the ground situation and feedback from the officials involved at the front lines, rather than taking decisions 15-days in advance. However, given the way liberals have targeted Cabinet Secretary and PM Modi, one can scarcely expect them to comprehend the granular details of a country’s response to a pandemic. Perhaps, for liberals, censuring Modi government prevail over the nation’s battle against the coronavirus.
