Be Ready! PM cares 2.0 could be coming soon with another round of thaali, taali, and mombatti.

PM cares 2.0

A few days after the nation-wide lockdown to control the spread of this coronavirus infection in the country, our Prime Minister Narendra Modi Ji announced the decision of setting up the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund on 27th of March last year to help collect donations from the nation which would help India win the fight against the pandemic.

Almost every person in the nation was sought to have donated to this PM cares fund, from celebrities, companies, industrialists to the common man. In fact, within a week itself, the number of donations had reached about 65 billion rupees and as of the current reports, it has reached over 100 billion rupees which is a lot considering it does not seem like it in today’s condition.

The controversies regarding this fund have been there since the starting as many argued against the point of having this new scheme when there has already been a similar funding scheme called the PM National Relief Fund (PMNRF) since 1948 in the country.

On the day this scheme was launched, a huge humanitarian crisis started to begin in the country when millions of migrant workers, having lost their jobs due to the lockdown and the pandemic, started moving back to their villages without having any food, any transport facility available. The workers and their families including their children had to walk for miles throughout the day, hungry, thirsty, and tired. Considering the amount of money the funding scheme had been welcoming, it was expected that the government would at least some parts of that money to help these workers and prevent this massive humanitarian crisis but nothing happened and it all seemed as if the PM “does not care”.

When we talk about tackling the situation of this pandemic, it is evident that it has been taken into consideration in a very casual manner since the beginning. Last year when the pandemic was just spreading in the country and was the perfect time to curb the situation, our prime minister appealed to the citizens of the country to clap and bang utensils by coming out in their balconies and honor the health workers of the country. But somewhere along the lines, what the government failed to recognize is that the situation is quite more serious to be calling people out to clap and bang utensils in the pandemic.

As a result of PM cares, many people came out on the roads and started celebrating this, giving it a very festive look and breaking the rules of social distancing leading to an increased number of cases in the country.

On the other hand also, when we talk about the PM cares fund now, it has been a year and we still have no idea where did the money of millions of people go.

As citizens, we believe there are certain areas that the government should pay more attention to and work upon at a time like this when the whole world is suffering from the pandemic and the condition in the country is worsening day by day.

1. Healthcare system
Government should provide sufficient healthcare facilities to every citizen of the country. However, when we look at the scenario now, basic facilities such as the availability of beds in the hospitals are also not available. There is a huge shortage of anti-viral drug called Remdesivir which is used to treat covid patients that are in a critical condition, there is a shortage of vaccines in the country, there is also not enough covid test kits. So it is evident that we lack a huge amount of healthcare facilities and that the government should pay more attention to this area.

2. Practices like Social distancing
Do we even need to talk about this? Just have a look at the Kumbh Mela scenario. According to the current reports, about 1,700 people have been found covid positive in the Haridwar Kumbh Mela 2021 and the Modi government has remained silent as usual. This type of negligence is not acceptable at a time like this when proper governance is crucial to maintain stability in the country. The government has, however, imposed night curfews and partial lockdowns in various states but that can not be considered enough of a step to tackle a situation like this.

When the cases were in hundreds throughout the country, last year, the government had imposed a nationwide lockdown but when there are lakhs of cases in the country every day, the government is refraining from imposing a complete lockdown‌ in the country. We do not know the reason and their ideology behind this but we also cannot deny the possibility of this having any relations with the election process. It is almost like when the country needs the government the most, the government is never there. Therefore, it is high time that the government did anything regarding such practices being followed in the country and broke the silence for what is happening in the country.

3. The Economy of the Country
With mismanagement of the vaccine drive, the current shortage of the number of vaccines and the disobedience of the social distancing parameters, the spike in the number of cases can not go unblamed. If this sudden surge in the number of cases would not have been there, the country was expected to have a V-shaped recovery in the first half of the current financial year, starting from April to September but considering the scenario, where the number of cases is far more than what it was in 2020, we can only say that the situation does not seem very good for the upcoming year.

We really can not say what the government has in their mind, are they again looking forward to launching more and more schemes like “PM cares 2.0”? burn candles on the balcony? clap to honor the workers? whatever may be the case, but this time we think it is essential that the government pay more attention to different areas before repeating the same mistakes as they did in the previous year and do the needful for the country as what is expected from them.