 Hello and let's talk about the COVID-19 situation in India. The number of cases has crossed the 145,000 mark with over 80,000 active cases and the number of deaths crossed the 4,000 mark over the weekend. This is even as the lockdown is not really in place, we've run out of options as far as the lockdown is concerned. So a lot of people are wondering what exactly is India's future regarding COVID-19? What is the likelihood of the disease progressing further? What are the measures that can be done to control this? We talked in news clicks, Praveer Pulkai has found his issues. Thank you Praveel so much for joining us. So India's lockdown is eased in many parts of the country, we see more people on the roads, especially in cities like Delhi, but there's been no real decline in the number of cases. In fact, we are seeing cases in the 6,500 to 7,000 range almost every day. So could you talk a bit about the progress of the disease so far? Well, actually things have become a little worse because not only is India now in the top 10 in the world in terms of totally infected, if we look at the new infections, the daily infections that we talked about, we are actually forked. So we are in fact one of the fastest developing in terms of new infections and the numbers, not a good position to be in. And if we look at the numbers also, there's another part of it which I think we should really worry about. And this is, if we look at the charts, then this is the chart that we have. We will see that our rate of growth, what is called the doubling rate is not really decreasing. In fact, if we see, we have been doubling it about 13 to 14 days. This rate has kept almost constant for the last about 25 days. Now the problem here is if we look at these figures, it also makes clear that this has happened during the long term because normally you see the impact of the lockdown two weeks after this occurred. That's when you start seeing the impact, maybe seven days, 10 days, two weeks after. So what we are seeing now is what were the infections taking place during the lockdown. So it's very clear that once you lift the lockdown and particularly with the kind of migrations we are seeing, the chaotic nature of handling of the migrants by the center and the states, complete lack of coordination, the lacks of people on the roads, the railway stations, inside trains, all of it put together, you are actually during the lockdown itself, you have created a large mixing situation. So that's not good for the handling of the epidemic. So it's not surprising that numbers have not flattened the way you can see most of the countries who started in around the same time as India, take for example, Malaysia or say Italy, France, Iran, they were about 10 to 250 days ahead of India in terms of the period of infections they had entered into. But they have been able to control long before we have even started to flatten the curve. So at the moment, India does not seem to show much flattening of the curve. It's rising at a steady pace. So things are not good. Now with the opening that you have talked about, lifting of the curves, we are likely to see this curve rising even faster, unless we do what we have been saying in news click from the beginning, that we need contact tracing, we need much more extensive testing compared to our population than we have now. Yes, we've increased the number of tests, but it doesn't help when the number of tests are much smaller than your population size should warrant. And yes, it's also true, the number of people who are being tested and if you take the ratio of the people infected to the people tested, that ratio wasn't too bad. It was about three to four percent earlier, but now particularly in cities, it's rising to something like five to seven percent. So even there you see a speeding up of the epidemic. Now if we take another look at the epidemic slightly differently from total figures, you will see there are about eight to 10 cities which are badly affected. And most of the numbers are really coming from there. And that also shows you that the way to really handle the epidemic was to look at where are the epicenters of the epidemic and try to tamp it down there instead of locking down the whole country that we have done using basically section 144 curfew and various other measures. We should have really been much more shall we say coordinated with the state governments, the local municipalities and corporations and then involve all of them in how to control the epidemic the way for instance Kerala has done or the way for instance China, South Korea, Vietnam, all these countries have successfully done. So I think this whole model which came from a very top-down view of the government handling everything, centralizing its powers which I think they did more for financial as well as economic reasons taking over the entire past. I think that has really harmed the way we have fought the epidemic and it's going to continue the way we are fighting the epidemic unless we really change our basic attitude to the epidemic. Right. So Praveen in this case like you said the most used tool to control the epidemic that is the lockdown we have already passed that stage where we can actually use it substantially anymore. So what options does the government have in terms of concrete measures especially for controlling these clusters? Well obviously we have to test extensively these clusters for instance China is now testing roughly at the rate of a million per day in Wuhan. Now that's the rate of testing they have done. I'm sure that we can't do it at that rate but 100,000 for the entire country is just too low in places like Bombay for instance it has to be much higher and certainly in Delhi as well it has to be much higher and probably if we take today Chennai, Calcutta as well as Pune these are places that require much more testing. So while we cannot approach one million per day in Wuhan but we certainly can do 100,000 per day in Bombay which is emerging at the big epicenter of the epidemic as well as in Delhi. So these are the simple measures that we can and should take which we are not taking and this is where the central government comes in to see that there is a complete supply chain that is built of supplying this kind of test kits to swabs to whatever other things we need in order to be able to successfully test including the PCRM machines. So this is the bare minimum that we have to now ramp up if we want to control the disease otherwise it's really going to get out of hand. If we see also the number of deaths it just figures are not looking good again. So in fact if we take the percentage of people who are dying that that number is in the range of five to six percent at the moment and a lot of the deaths seem to be not getting reported properly because the cremation figures and the burial ground figures in Delhi for instance does not match with what the Delhi government is saying. So with all of this we also have an uncertainty in the number of death figures that we reported that we reported but whichever way you take it Indian death figures are quite high and that also the second cause for worrying for us how do you do it which means the hospitals are not really equipped to handle the really severe cases and yes people can come there receive certain amount of support and so on but the kind of intensive care support the kind of oxygen support various other measures we need to take including protecting the health staff it might be their protection might be there in Bombay Delhi some amount of protective gear certainly is available but in the other places it's not very sure that proper protective equipment is available. So all those measures if you are not taken not only we will not break the cycle of infection but we are also going to lose many more people then otherwise what I would call as clearly avoidable deaths. Thank you Pramir so much for talking to us. In our next segment we look at the story of Jyothi Kumali who cycled from Gurugram to Bihar with her injured father for a distance over 1200 kilometers. Now this has become an example of the issues faced by poor and migrant workers in India but after this incident happened the Indian Cycling Federation decided to offer her some trials. We talk to news clicks Leslie Xavier on the significance or the problematic aspects of this gesture. Leslie thank you so much for joining us. So the case of Jyothi Kumali has become a bit of an example of the contradictions of India's lockdown and there's been a lot of discussion debate about how the government is treating the people but in the midst of this the Cycling Federation has decided to offer her trials some sort of maybe an opening for professional sportsmanship so is this a gen do you does this look like a genuine gesture or is it more PR? It's worse than PR if you look at the scale of despicableness if that's the word. It's gimmick and it shows how our sports administrators are lacking as they are in their professional capacity about for running the show. They also lack finer qualities like empathy and also a deep understanding of what is happening around in the country and what needs to be done to remain relevant socially, I mean forget the relevance in sports as such. So this particular instance with Cycling Federation of India coming forward offering to Jyothi Kumali it's firstly let's look at Cycling Federation and how it's functioning at the moment. It's one of the I mean let's say that it's not exactly the best run sporting Federation in the country. It does have its own cycling program in Delhi where it's a centralized training center where a lot of cyclists are there, young cyclists and all that. But let's just get back to a particular pocket in the country where cycling is big. Talent-wise it has produced over the last 30-40 years ever since 1980s when it was discovered that there is an inherent talent in people coming from that area that for for cycling and that too at an international level. So I'm talking about Andaman and Nicobal Islands. So at present when you look at the current crop of cyclists who have come out from from the two cyclists stand out one is Isu Albin who is a world champion junior world champion and another one is Deborah who is also a world championship medalist and one of the best cyclists in Asia at the moment and there is a steady stream of cyclists who have come from from that island but one of our news click reporters Vaibhav Raghunandan he did a in-depth feature on Andaman and Nicobal cyclists during lockdown just into lockdown he had he had contacted them and he's trying to understand what is happening because here we are talking about an island which anyways was always in seclusion more or less in seclusion dependent on the mainland for a lot of things depending on ships to arrive or flights to come in and now it's in complete lockdown so what is happening within the system that's what the trying to understand was but then we try we dug up certain things in Andaman and Nicobal cycling which we didn't expect for instance there are there is a former Asian champion with a coach right now and this lady has not been paid salary for the last three years because someone is not pushing the paperwork sagging federation is not getting involved in it so she has been working for free and at lockdown she has no means of income no means of and she is living with a former colleague a former teammate of us at at her mercy so to speak because she has a garment job she has a police job in in so this is just one instance where you're talking about a former international medalist and neither the cycling federation of India nor the sports authority of India or anybody is interested in it's not giving her a job she's already doing the job for free you just need to push the paperwork so that salary starts coming in she's a contracted worker so contracts get get renewed every year also and so so this is just one instance so under the nose cycling federation has an area where it has produced world-class cyclists and you are not doing anything creative or substantial there and then suddenly you just I mean assume that there is a untapped potential in this lady who was trying to save her life as well as her father's life by cycling 200 kilometers to a village and it is I mean unlike certain quarters in the social media and even from the US the president's daughter herself had had said the such a heartwarming story but I firmly believe that this is an insult to the suffering that has been that that that the girl as well as her father went through and the countless millions who are going through at this at this moment trying to migrate back to back to their homes their villages because what it looks like is that there's not so much a question of addressing the core issues that lie behind what led to her going being forced to do that as opposed to sort of glorifying the act itself yeah so two parts to it you are right about that but again in the in the scope of cycling federation of India obviously what is happening why why this is happening is something probably it's beyond the scope but doing this doing this doesn't solve the issue as such right they could they could probably do things constructively in the way provide stuff for the for the for the people who are suffering out there rather than trying to again it's it's this is not the first time such a such gimmicks have happened so you must have you must remember that kambala runner from karnataka was yeah who was approached by the athletics federation of india after you recorded a time which is faster than you say in bolds uh I mean reportedly faster than you say in bold but then again there are many factors to it and the athlete himself was the first to say that I am I realize crazy to do something like this because I'm not going to come for a trial even jyoti kumari said she's not going to go for a trial because she realizes probably she realizes I mean and these people are out there have faced something as as serious and as life-threatening as as traveling 1200 kilometers under this blazing sun and and unsure where they will get to eat or drink or whatever and unsure about their life ahead also so they have a larger understanding of life and definitely than someone who sits in an AC room in Delhi and tries to tweet out such such gimmicks so athletics athletics federation of india coming forward with that that gimmick at that point which again it was a less serious time now at the cycling federation doing this is is is completely and it's it's very uncouth and completely unprofessional and at the same time there are there is a I mean if you look at how I mean if you if you just oppose this to the all sporting bodies are run across the country it clearly shows the unprofessional approach that that we are so we are banking on calamities so and and suffering to figure out our sport next next generation of sporting talent which which which ideally should should be much before there should be programs set up so that even from the poorer sections or even from from villages or wherever you you identify talent and you nurture them so a classic case of this is Ima dasa's she burst into the scene two years back a little over two years back and she was an identified talent before that and she just happened to be at the right place and suddenly some coach discovered you know Lisa and then she was brought into the sports authority of India program and suddenly in two years boom she stars rose she became the face of Indian athletics but it's the such exception shouldn't happen that's what I had written at that point also Ima dasa shouldn't be an accident Ima dasa should be coming out as part of the system systematically nurtured from areas where it's it's known to produce talent as such but so such systems are non-existent in the country and then when when these things happen it it just brings down Indian sport and its stature to to a to a much lower level than it already is so administrators should probably understand this factor and also post this this this crisis maybe they can use this crisis and this knowledge and administrators should should should understand that this situation is unprecedented the cycles the crisis that is happening across across the world and post this crisis they should probably I mean remodel their modest operandi or how they how their function in such a way that sport serves its purpose in a larger picture in a larger social setup where social upliftment is is possible to sport which has been the case across is I mean till till recent recent past where sport is an engine which is used for many from the poorer sections to come into I mean get common jobs and lift themselves from from the poverty that they come from and at this instance I would just need I will I'll wind up by saying a few words about Balveer Singh senior who died yesterday he was three-time gold medalist he was part of the first Indian independent Indian Olympic team in 1948 in London they won gold and back to back they won three gold medals and he was a star striker for India in fact his gold scoring record is still and passed from the 1952 Helsinki games he died in Chandigarh yesterday 96 year old he was born in Punjab in the Pakistan province Pakistan side of Punjab and partition he saw what happened the suffering that happened the ex-orders and in his in his book he had written about how it is when crisis happens it's always the poor who gets displaced it always the poor who goes through the most suffering and which is the same even now after so many years of independence even now it so I mean it's just incidental that the great man died yesterday and we were just going through this this this couple of interviews that we had done and all that and so it's it we never learn and and it's it continues and that's that kind of an attitude less sympathetic attitude continues even I mean of course at that point Britishers and all they never cared but it's it's so seems that us Indians also don't care as Indians in position of privilege and power never doesn't care so thank you so much Leslie for talking to us that's all we have in this episode let's talk we'll be back tomorrow with the latest news developments of the day until then keep watching news click