March of 24, 2020, the government announced a three-week nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19 in the country. Almost a year and half has passed since the outbreak of Covid-19 in China, then in Thailand. People started to cope with Covid-19 soon. Started working soon from home even online education started and online groceries and everything started.
But while coping we did forget the badly hit people due to Covid. The poor people or lower-class people who couldn’t afford everything offline and cannot afford to sit at home with their livelihood, the migrants’ workers, the daily wages workers, senior citizens, students who were at the verge of finishing their graduation etc.
Especially poor people. Central government did announced a relief package of Rs 1.7 trillion (US$22.5 billion) to provide free food and money transfers to the poor and vulnerable, and lower-class populations, and health insurance for healthcare workers, among other things, but these is all official one doesn’t know how many of them received it and what did they actually used money and food for.
Poor people are affected the most as many didn’t have android phones or laptops for their children to attend online school. They couldn’t afford to order things online or to an extent they didn’t even had money to buy food. Many shops inside slums were even open and social distance wasn’t even expected from slums. The main reason being the small houses at close proximity, public toilets, and unhygienic environment. Don’t know who is to blame for this situation of slums; the government or the people because in slums you can find houses having LED T.V and the dish to provide them with cable but not a toiled attached to their houses. Social distancing wasn’t to be expected from them and they were also the one who didn’t get infected with viruses too frequently because of their immunity. Their bodies have survived through worse of conditions, so they didn’t even get affected too frequently. Again, don’t know whether we should consider it as positive aspect or negative. Negative being that they have lived in the worst conditions that Covid-19, that shook the whole world didn’t affect this section of India or positive being a huge section of India have antibody or are immune to Covid-19.
Other problem they faced were that many upper classes people, or upper middle class still had house help like drivers, cooks, cleaners etc. They were still on duty whether they willingly wanted to work, or the employer forced them to work differed house to house. But even in this situation they had to work and be victims of Covid-19. Many even lost their lives for the same. Some of them were even stuck at their relatives or employer’s house and Police punished those violating the orders which apparently resulted in abuses against people in need.
Many labour and migrant workers went back to their native place some infected and some not. This also being a reason for spreading of diseases to rural areas where there was lack of facilities. This led to more sickness and spreading of disease.
Poor people are the section which gets affected the most in every situation leading to never letting them get out of it. Poverty is a much bigger concept than it could be imagined by one. Not just in India but poverty all around the world especially the third world poor people are affected the most.
Aishwarya Says:
I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.
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