Why Social Distancing Is Near Impossible In India!
Whereas the practical
problems of maintaining social distancing are mostly seen in cities and towns,
the above mentioned traits are common in all people of urban and rural areas. A
friend from a village recently told me that as per the COVID-19 protocols one
household of the village decided to restrict a marriage only to a few
relatives. All the villagers immediately got terribly offended and demanded to
be invited at all costs. It is a normal custom for any household of an Indian
village to invite that entire village for a marriage ceremony under any circumstances;
else the household faces the stigma of social boycott. We also must mention
here that a traditional marriage in India can be as long as a five-day and the
funeral ceremony following an unfortunate death of a member of family can be a
13-day long affair, with visitors and staying relatives, either celebrating or
mourning, adorning the family every day of the affairs.
Obviously, while talking
about the practical problems the main one that emerges is the country’s
bursting population leading to the maximum possible population density in
almost all towns and cities, particularly the metros like Mumbai and Kolkata.
Once out of your home, which is also likely to be very dense with bountiful members
of family in suffocating confines, you cannot avoid brushing with people coming
and overtaking you in the small lanes or in the narrow pavements of the wider
roads/highways or in the parks or in the malls or in the cinema-hall complexes
or anywhere. Although you’d very much like to observe social distancing you
cannot be as heartless as to elbowing and throwing fellow inhabitants out of
your way. The bursting population makes the urban infrastructure inadequate and
due to heavy traffic jams people have to push at each other at every pedestrian
crossing. Then, the mushrooming bikers make the life of pedestrians miserable
by converting them into closely-knit clusters. Situation is so horrible in the
local trains of some big cities that the respective governments dare not open
the trains for everyone even long after lifting lockdowns effectively.
The Government of India and
all state governments know very well about such technical impossibilities and
can ill afford to be less lenient lest the political parties ruling the
governments lose popularity. They urge them still to maintain social
distancing; make entry into temples/mosques/malls restricted, but in that case
crowds form at the entry gates and for the same moving traffic reason they
cannot spread around into the streets; they urge people to celebrate any
occasion with a fixed number of invitees, but no country can have such a large
police force that they can supervise every nook and corner; they make the buses
run at half-capacity, but because of that crowds overflow at the bus-stops and
again, who can effectively check every bus plying as to how many passengers
inside; in the railways and the airlines the middle births/seats are not
cross-marked so as to avoid loss of revenues, and the railways making rules
like no pantry car or blankets to be provided in the trains act only to the
disadvantage of the passengers, already running high risks of infection.
The biggest religious
festivals are the biggest concerns of the political parties ruling the governments,
because they cannot afford to hurt the sentiments of various community who are
their eventually their voters, and for this reason there have always been
regular violations even during lockdowns (the devotees, well-educated or not,
believe that once in the service of the gods no virus dare touch them). How
could one think realistically of forcing social distancing in a festival where
devotees in millions participate daily? Positively speaking, for a change at
times the concerned governments did cancel big pan-India festivals. But how can
one avoid mentioning the Governments deciding to hold elections when they
should ideally have imposed lockdowns/restrictions, and we all know how
devastating the second COVID-19 wave turned out to be.
So then, social distancing as a much-desired norm exists only in preaching and in papers; in actuality it cannot be observed except for high-level conferences held in big enriched auditoriums. No government in India is bold enough to decide re-opening of schools/colleges that have remained closed for more than 17 months for the same reasons, just not enough space to accommodate and do justice to the huge number of students. Masks, hand hygiene and vaccination emerge as the most effective ways to possibly stop a third wave that, as per the Government of India itself, can loom large anytime in September 2021. Unfortunately, the much hyped ‘biggest’ vaccination campaign of the world has still not picked up to protect the majority of the citizens. As the stoic says, ‘India is India; whatever happens here is always for the good.'
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