Corona Virus Part 7, Easing As Weekly Blogger, Socialist Societies and Great Missions

                 My weekly sojourns in this space are continuing for the past few weeks. Let me disclose that I do not have any issue to continue but the problem comes from the relevance and purpose in these trying times. If the problem is not overcome and if the blog fails to serve its purpose and be relevant then I will discontinue without any second thought. Writing non-sense is not funny when you are burning the midnight oil and when many are suffering around you with the pandemic. Hence, the moment I cannot dish out something inspiring, motivational, positive, purposeful in these painful times, I cease to write these weekly updates and switch back to my old ways of updating the blog once in a month or more.

                 If not anything, the issue might be my inability to meet the weekly deadlines but as mentioned, it is a challenging ask and to churn out something meaningful every week is a critical task. The problem comes because I would like to sensationalize something, portray an act heroically, put forward new concepts, write something new and logical – traits which does not fit the bracket of frequent or weekly writers. The frequent writers need to write things plainly and without any exaggeration, without looking for too many novel ideas, putting things in plain facts or critique without too many out-of-box chains of thought. As a writer, I never intends my target audience to leave disappointed – a trait which is not possible if you become weekly blogger. One might not satisfy the readers all the times. One cannot always write hit posts and those that become underlying hashtag trends but converting to weekly frequency will have to forego some of these characteristics. But till date I did not forego any of these qualities in my weekly blogs and giving my best to satisfy the educated reader. The danger lies in this very notion of trying to maintain the quality in minimum quantity of time. Playing with this danger can become suicidal to the cause which breaks the author from posting every week. Hence, shaping up to be a weekly writer in terms of longevity needs a sea of changes to what I am presently.

                 One of the subjects which gets me hooked is the poverty in the country. I had written few times on this topic already and the deeds I did to alleviate the same. While I did not study any books on the subject, I generally use common sense to arrive at the information on the subject. I must re-iterate that I work daily on the same or the cornerstone of my work is to lift people out of poverty. Out of my sheer inability, I do not or cannot work for the rich and can only mingle freely with the poor. While I work and intend to bring people away from poverty, one of the models I despise is the capitalism. There are many ills of capitalism. Among the many is capitalists can quickly turn into greedy set of people while trying to capitalize on every opportunity. Capitalism by definition refers private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. The definition itself has profit maximization by the private entities at its core by overlooking all the acceptable norms. Capitalism is not good for the people, not good for the earth and not good for itself. Coming to the present topic, capitalism is the reason for the economic system with social inequality, unfair distribution of wealth, economic inequality, economic instability and alike. Capitalism makes rich richer and the poor poorer. The gap between rich and poor is widened in the capitalist form of society. Take the example of Indian context – The top 10% of the Indian population holds 77% of the national wealth. 73% of the wealth generated in 2017 went to the richest 1%, while 67 million Indians who comprise the poorest half of the population saw only a 1% increase in their wealth. These gigantic differences between the incomes of the rich and poor are particularly prominent in a capitalist society.

            On the other hand, socialism is an economic system where the means of production, such as money and other forms of capital, are owned to some degree by the public. Under a socialist system, everyone works for wealth that is in turn distributed to everyone. I root for the socialist form of governance just because of the distribution of wealth it revolves upon. In socialism, the major role is played by government which partakes shared ownership of resources and central planning that provide a more equal distribution of goods and services and a more equitable society. While India is a mixed economy, there is a heavy leaning on the capitalist mindset. I support socialism as far as it equally distributes the wealth without concentrating in the hands of wealthy few. It is a great tool for poverty alleviation and reduction. When socialism is correctly implemented in the country, true to its definition, poverty in its theoretical, physical or any shape will not be found in the country. It is the poor and the marginalized who are mostly affected by the recent pandemic and it gave me an opportunity to work for them by at least satisfying their hunger. I work towards a more socialist society where governments work and spend on the welfare of the poor. The governments must work steadfastly towards a more socialist society by shedding the economic imbalances.

                 Coming to the statistics of the covid19 affected people, there are a total of 45.11 lakhs infected people worldwide and 3.02 lakh people dead. In the past week, 6.1 lakh new cases came up and 30 thousand passed away. The weekly 6 lakh new cases has been a constant for sometime now. USA, Russia, Brazil, UK, India, Peru have become the hotspots for the virus, recording thousands of new cases every day. With such a diverse and widespread pandemic in sight, there cannot be any easing on the restrictions for at least few more weeks. India has been particularly bad in the past 10 days recording more than 35000 cases in the mid of dense lockdown. The country is in lockdown for the past 50 days and if the infected number doubles towards the flag end in a matter of few days, then it implies that the public is not correctly following lockdown. It might turn worse with further easing of restrictions. Life is more important than livelihoods and the government should take its decision based on it.  The division of the country into zones and lifting the curbs is working well after it is properly implemented. The concentration must be on Red zones where infected numbers are swelling each day. Each suffering state should look at the example of Kerala and China which have flattened the curve of number of new cases for a while now after registering heavy count initially.

                  The great nation of India has received the stimulus applied by me very well and announced its own stimulus packages in the midst of lockdown. Few important missions have been carried out by the airlines and railways. First one, Vande Bharat mission has brought 14,800 Indians stranded abroad due to corona virus lockdown and will further bring 30,000 from 31 countries in phase 2. The mission is a lifeline for all the persons stranded abroad with no clarity about their future in these difficult times. Secondly, the railways ran 642 shramik special trains so far and nearly 8 lakh migrants have been moved to their homes. It is a huge operation which provided the migrants a sigh of relief and the comfort of their homes after a long time. Moreover, the second part of economic stimulus package focused on migrant workers and farmers. A host of benefits have been announced to the 8 crore migrants in the country who are provided with free grains for next two months and employment, income from a multi-thousand crore plan. I worked for migrants since the last 40 days and seeing that they are getting benefitted by these array of measures does not put my work to waste. I had given my heart, literally and figuratively, by taking huge risks, to the cause and it is heartening to see the dividends flow. Leave about precise implementation, at least it is commendable that they came up with these strategies and intention to help the distressed. On the whole, the beautiful nation of India has matured a lot and taking beautiful measures to ease the strains of lockdown on common man.