 Hello and welcome to Dispatches from India, a show by People's Dispatch. In this show, we bring you the major news developments from India over the past week. Our first story is about the COVID-19 situation in the country, the responses by the government and attempts by certain sections to bring about a religious angle to the disease. The number of reported cases in the country is nearly 3400 with the number of active cases at 3030 as many as 77 people have died in the country as of the morning of April 5th. Many questions are being raised about the government's response. The first is whether India is testing enough and whether the actual number of cases is getting reported. Going by the numbers on April 3rd just close to 70,000 tests have been done. With these numbers, India's testing figures per million population is still one of the lowest in the world. A number of experts have said that the country may not be aware of the true magnitude of the infection. There is also the issue of shortage of personal protection equipment for healthcare workers. The government took up this matter seriously only towards the third week of March which was already very late. Doctors and medical professionals are trying to privately source much of this gear in many places. Dr. Yogesh Jain of the Jan Swasti Sahyog talked to us earlier this week on the risks of there not being enough PPE kits. Starting from 27th of February when this call was taken on developing a rapid program to combat the epidemic, in the first three and a half weeks we did not see any movement about procuring the personal protective equipment for the people of the world with the front lines to handle the problems. But on the contrary, even in the weeks that have happened in the last 10 days also, it has been treated more as a logistics issue. As if one has to get the protective equipment as much as arranging ambulances or arranging certain pathways in care in a hospital, I would say that the availability of personal protective equipment is more related to the outcomes. As I can see from the fear and the concerns that my own health workers in my own hospital and health program have and as well as other ideologically motivated organizations that I work with, there is a significant amount of fear and which is justified fear that they might have a risk to their own lives in the next weeks to come. And in that situation, the fact that there is a looming risk of not having adequate protection when they will be forced to manage people has made almost a panic like situation which necessitates that personal protective equipment has to be there. There will be mass care desertion is my fear from both public and the private hospitals that we have in that country. And in this case, in the public system, this will be remarkable where already we know that the level of accountability is still questionable for many people who work in it. And if this protection is not there, this desertion, this application of one's clinical responsibilities would be far more even at an individual level of health workers which both include nurses, doctors and other support staff. So the key question is do we have the resources right now to actually produce this or do we need to import it at this point in time? Well, I think there has been a problem at multiple levels. We are also, the fact that the procurement has been given to one public sector undertaking to procure from all the manufacturers has slowed down the process of procurement. But also manufacturing contracts have been given out, tenders have been floated and people have been asked to deliver those products. There has been a tardiness in that level also. At another level, we have to get some of these components of some of these protective equipment from abroad if not the finished products. And that has to be worked on on a war footing, something that is lacking. But I would add there is another component to it. There is a lot of wastage of the personal protective equipment that is happening. I can see any number of politicians, bureaucrats and police people and other people in the administration wearing protective equipment like a N95 mask, which is not something that they need to wear at all. Those should only be kept for people who are health workers at various levels of working with various levels of risks that they would have to take. So as an example, I would say why don't the stage issue a strict guidance for people who are not health workers, not to be wasting and not to be demonstrating their power by using protective equipment that are only meant for the health workers. Otherwise, you're going to have system prices where people will stop working is what my fear is. In the middle of this, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released a video where he gave a call for people to switch off all lights at home, come out of their balconies and light lamps and torches on April 5th for 9 minutes at 9 p.m. This is to show the unity of the people in fighting the disease. Immediately concerns were raised about what impact this would have on the power grid. This is because the sudden variations in demand during this exercise could lead to the power grid collapsing. This may cause massive power outages. Modi has been criticized earlier for his gimmicks during the pandemic. A few weeks ago, he gave a call for celebrating the work of healthcare professionals. But this ended in people gathering in many places leading to the risk of further spread. A number of cases of COVID-19 in India have come out of a gathering of Muslim missionaries in Delhi during March 13th to 15th. The organization which conducted this event, Tablighi Jamaat, has been severely criticized for holding the event. However, a section of the media and supporters of India's ruling rights in the party have used this to run an anti-Muslim campaign. A lot of anti-Muslim hashtags were trending on Twitter and a campaign is continuing even now on this. Left and progressive organizations have strongly opposed this campaign. In a joint statement, leading left parties said that these campaigns devide the united effort required by all Indians to battle this pandemic and defeat it. The Communist Chief Minister of Kerala in a press conference made this point very clear. This is a very important point. We have experienced a lot of things such as health issues, social issues like marriage, and many other things. We have also experienced a lot of things like that. We have also experienced a lot of things like that. We have also experienced a lot of things such as health issues, and the people who have been involved in this, are now seeing some of the activities that are being done with special intention. The public is concerned about the situation, the people who have been involved in it, and the people who have been involved in it. The people of Ashayushnathayur are getting beaten up a lot. Social media is trying to get rid of this. There is one thing to be said. No one is allowed to walk on the streets of this world. The corona virus is not affected by the virus. We all have to be careful. One by one, we have to be careful. Our society has to take full care of it. That is what needs to be done. Our society has to take full care of it. We have to take full care of it. Another initiative announced by the Prime Minister recently is PM Cares, a separate fund for collecting donations to fight the corona virus disease. However, many observers have asked why India needs a separate fund when there is already one called the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund. Journalist Bhasah Singh spoke to us on this strange phenomenon. As fight against corona virus enters into a critical stage in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced PM Cares, a public charitable trust. It raised many questions, many suspicions around it. The first thing that why PM Cares, which is directly linked with corona fundraising, because already in India there is PM Relief Fund, which is an accountable and transparent body. Then people started asking the question and they are still without any answers that why at this juncture, PM waited all this long and he announced on 28th March PM Cares, which is completely an opaque body, an opaque structure, which is headed by PM himself and as far as we know, the members are the Home Minister, Mr. Amisha, Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitaraman and Defence Minister Rajna Singh. Apart from this, very less information is in public domain. The biggest thing that this was not at all discussed in the parliament and as we know that just five days before of announcement of the PM Cares, that's on 28th, it was announced, five days before parliament was in session and there was a lot of discussion around corona and how the Indian government is going to have a fight and what preparations are going to be done. It was discussed in the parliament. The people and the parliamentarians are asking now that when parliament was in session, why not this PM Cares was discussed so that everybody could have been taken on the board and the other point, which is very relevant, that when the Prime Minister announced about the PM Cares, at the same time the PM Relief Fund was having enough money. It was having 3800 crores, which was lying unspent and the country was facing huge fund crisis to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. So why the government waited so long and it has not utilized this fund which was lying with him? So this question is still unanswered and the people who are raising, including the parliamentarians are not satisfied and the government has not come with a single line of justification that why the government felt the need of PM Cares and why it has not relied on the parliamentarian process or the transparent process or why it has not utilized the money of the PM Relief Fund so far. Many public intellectuals including noted historian Ramchand Guha and parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor and many others are raising a question that whether this PM Cares is a PR or we can say public relation exercise or a new branding exercise from Prime Minister. That is why he waited all the way so long to launch this program and finally the biggest question is related with the foreign donations. Initially when there was call from donations on the website there was a swift code and as we all know the swift code of a bank is needed when there is a call for inter-country donations from one country to another country when there is a donation then there is a need of swift code and at the same time as it is reported in the media Prime Minister interacted with the foreign missions Indian embassies and there through video conferencing he requested all the embassies to generate and mobilize enough fund for the PM Cares. At that time swift code was there on the website and when much red flag was raised much questions were raised that how a foreign funding is generated for this kind of a public charitable trust then all of a sudden what we find that this code is missing from the website. So, the biggest question now when India is facing a huge crunch of resources huge crunch of ventilators of mask which is very much needed by the people who are working in the hospitals who are engaged in the cleaning work they don't have proper sanitary gloves and mask that why the country when they are being funded so much they have so much fund in the PM relief funds and now with the PM Cares how this whole thing to fight against COVID-19 became a political PR exercise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi this is the biggest coalition which is linked right directly to PM Cares and finally here is a feature on the migrant workers in the country hundreds of thousands of migrant workers began leaving India's big cities after national lockdown was imposed from March 25th it was clear that no arrangements had been made to take care of their needs as many of them are daily wage laborers Delhi was a key centre of this migration with people leaving the capital of India to walk hundreds of kilometres to the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh let's hear what some of these workers had to say we are not getting anything to eat or drink this is a big problem we are going to Bihar to live in Arariya district we live in Ardhoyi district and we have to go to our village we are going to Sajjanpur this is Chagandarabad this is Badani this is Muradana this is Barili this is Ramnipaniya district we are coming from this side and coming from this side there are at least 10 crore migrant workers in the country who work very far from their homes so that their families can eat their food we were living on the rent and the owners refused us now we are roaming on the road we don't have a car so we will leave the car we don't have a car we don't have a car we don't have any expenses we don't have any jails we don't have any work the owner of the house refused us he told us to stay here he told us to stay here I told him to stay here he gave me 500 rupees now after 3-4 days when I am hungry I am eating biscuits we are going to Bihar what are we doing? it is very important for us to remember that the majority of the people in this country are migrant workers no one will give them any salary they earn and eat every day if they can't earn, they won't be able to eat we don't have anything to eat we don't have anything to eat we don't have anything to eat suddenly one day if their situation where they don't have a job and they don't have food and they are afraid that a disease might come that they might die so if you are in that situation where do you want to go? to the place where you live but the government stopped the train at night stopped the bus a long line is going on for many days and nights so that they can reach their home what are we doing? when the hunger is dying we are thinking that the roads will also die what are we going to do? what are we going to do? that's all we have in this episode of Dispatches from India we will be back next week with more news developments from the country until then, keep watching People's Dispatch