 Tamil Nadu witnessed a terrible COVID-19 debacle in the month of May. The state was headed by an interim government all through April when the virus cases were steadily shooting up and the situation went out of control in May when the new government took over. Within 10 days, the daily count shot up from 20,000 to 30,000 cases in the first half of May. Chennai and its surrounding districts were the worst affected for the most part and later, in the western districts, the infections spread to the base. In the first couple of weeks, many people died from shortage of medical oxygen and ventilators. We saw COVID-19 patients in ambulances queuing outside hospitals, awaiting beds. To look at what happened before, see the election commission had the election on April 6th and decided to have the counting on May 6th and this is the peak time actually in which the surge really started. So if you look at the surging of cases in the second wave, this is a very important time and during this time, there was no administration in the state being handled by the governor and officials. So obviously, this is a time that should have been really used to push and if the counting had been done in April 8th or the first week itself, a new government could have taken over and the new government could have pushed for making implementation even before the surge started. And there's no reason for the election commission to have this long gap because obviously, the parties which are involved here have no stake in any other state. So I think the first fault and the whole Tamil Nadu deaths and all, I will hold the election commission to blame. Soon after the DMK formed the government in the first week of May and Stalin took over as the chief minister, efforts were made to bring the situation under control. However, there was still a lack of clarity on how to control the infections and how to deal with the pressure on the health system. Mirage for medical oxygen, remdesivir drug, ventilators, vaccines and RTPCR tests created havoc in the state. The infrastructure to fight the infection kept growing, but the number of infections also grew along with it, constantly outgrowing the state's capacity to handle the pandemic. The state was simultaneously imposing strict lockdowns in a faced-out manner to control the spread of the infection. Letters were written to the government to Modi Prime Minister asking the increase of allocation of oxygen to the Tamil Nadu government and also importantly, the Finance Minister's suggestion, the Finance Minister Tamil Nadu Finance Minister's suggestion, anyway, that GST, whatever the amount that has been pending from GST collection to the state should be given and GST on essential COVID items should be removed. I think these are very good demands that have been put forward and hopefully the center will not be stuck like an ostrich and will respond sensibly to these demands. Yeah, and of course, subsequently also, they have shown that, you know, they've increased the amount of hospital beds with cylinders available and managed to get more oxygen to the state and of course, you know, improved the, you know, local interactions. They have allowed NGOs to register themselves and get involved in local interactions. I know people, for example, students from SFI who have been allowed to work in hospitals wearing safety PPE kits to render service. So these are good measures involving the community, involving the people in fighting COVID. The lockdown as such was, I mean, it is still being badly handled, not as bad as earlier. Earlier it was mostly a police charge and now it's not so bad. But still the problem is that it is not being done in a logical manner. For example, opening shops, before the, I mean, there was a small break during the lockdown, shops were open and then just before the more intense lockdown kicked off, they opened shops. But, you know, if you keep shops open for a short time and expect everybody to go and buy, then there'll be a huge rush. So most sensible would have been, you know, locality wise, getting people to, you know, in the local shops which are there, some sort of a token system or some sort of just as they did for the giving the 2000 rupees. Come up with a system where people don't have to go and rush. The shops can be open. But you allow only people who have some token that is issued to be, you know, some system that can be done, maybe the token system will not be saying possibly everywhere. But I'm saying localized approach should be taken. You know, these lockdowns, statewide lockdowns, citywide lockdowns are really not good. You know, it should be more a containment strategy locally. And see, for example, in China, just as a thing, so China, now I just saw, has in Guangdong, that is a South city, Southern most city there, they have seen a sudden rise of cases of about a few 5000 or something in that range. No, so immediately what they've done is they have made, contained the people have some sort of a lockdown, but not a total lockdown where what they've done is they've done, they're doing testing, you know, housewise testing. So they are closing down one area, doing housewise testing, and so on. So this is the sort of thing that should be done. There's no point in just telling everybody you stay at home and allowing people to go, it is okay getting passes and all that, but a better system is a localized approach. There were some positive changes towards the end of May. The daily fresh cases and active cases saw a dip. However, what lies ahead is quite unclear. With this last extension of lockdown, the second wave also should be subsiding. So hopefully for the third wave, we'll be better off and do things better compared to what we have done in the second wave. Second wave, because the handling with the central government has been completely horrendous and no handling. It has been complete free for all. And this should be removed and hopefully state governments will also exert that muscle and tell the center that they have to change their act. And state governments also should follow decentralized administration more.