Looking back at first case, shutdown 1.0 :: Bleak prospects
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: June 12 2020 -

The co-incidence was remarkable.

On March 24, 2020, Manipur recorded its first coronavirus case when a young girl who returned from the UK tested positive and it was in the night of the same day that Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Nationwide lockdown 1.0 to come into force from March 25.

Manipur and the country have surely moved on since then, the only constant being the virus that causes COVID-19.

So from just one positive case of COVID-19 on March 24, Manipur today has 335 positive cases with the number set to increase while in India back on March 25, the number of infected persons was 618 with 13 deaths.

Fast forward to June 10 and the country has already overtaken China with Mumbai crossing the total tally of Wuhan at 51,100.

From intense lockdown in a bid to flatten the curve and break the chain of infection, the country is now staring at Unlock 1 with shopping malls, restaurants and others allowed to open, under the condition that strict social distancing is maintained.

In between, the people saw the Nationwide lockdown extended five times with the restrictions extended till June 30 in containment zones.

All these have had an adverse impact on the economy of the land and Unlock-1 was announced primarily to allow certain sets of economic activities to help the people get back to their livelihood activities.

The lockdown also meant that thousands from Manipur joined the others in losing their jobs, especially those who were working in different cities of India as salesboys and salesgirls, in beauty parlours, in the security division of big business houses, as nurses at numerous private hospitals and clinics etc.

This is one primary factor for the huge number of returnees that Manipur has seen ever since the Government decided to throw open the doors to all folks stranded outside the State.

There could be numerous reasons why thousands and thousands of young boys and girls move outside the State to earn a living, stay together in a rented room and if possible monetarily help the family.

For one it is to look for a better avenue to earn a living that many left home to proceed to the big cities in other parts of the country.

And even as the natives of Manipur and the North East had to cope with the loss of job in the face of so many business houses shutting down, they also had to face the ignominy of being racially profiled, called names ranging from chinky, ching-chong Chinaman, momo to corona.

It is against this reality that thousands opted to return home to Manipur.

Now with the first phase of Unlock 1 on, the significant question is how those who have lost their jobs and have returned can be rehabilitated.

It should be obvious to one and all that Manipur will simply not have the means to engage all the returnees gainfully.

Many of them today stare at the grim prospect of not being without a job. No one, least of all the Government can be expected to whip up a magic mantra and gainfully engage all the returnees.

Moreover, it also stands that many small time business set ups or small time trade such as the leikai tea stall, the many small eating joints, those who earned a living selling fired chicken or other meat at different locations would have suffered immense loss.

With Unlock 1 on, the task now should be to see how those who have lost their jobs and their means of earning a living can be assisted.