巴拉特

分类： bharat

  • Punjab Police commando patrol in the front of Hall Gate during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the Covid-19 coronavirus in Amritsar on March 26, 2020

    At least 15,000 people who may have caught the coronavirus from a ‘super-spreader’ guru are under strict quarantine in northern India after the Sikh religious leader died of Covid-19.

     

    The 70-year-old guru, Baldev Singh, had returned from a trip to Europe’s virus epicentre Italy and Germany when he went preaching in more than a dozen villages in Punjab state.

     

    It has sparked one of India’s most serious alerts related to the pandemic and special food deliveries are being made to each household under even tighter restrictions than the 21-day nationwide stay-at-home order imposed by the government.

     

    “The first of these 15 villages was sealed on March 18, and we think there are 15,000 to 20,000 people in the sealed villages,” said Gaurav Jain, a senior magistrate for the district of Banga, where Singh lived.

     

    “There are medical teams on standby and regular monitoring,” he told AFP on Friday.

     

    Nineteen people who were in contact with the preacher have already tested positive for the new virus, said Vinay Bublani, a local deputy police commissioner.

     

    Results are being awaited from more than 200 others.

     

    The guru and his two associates — who have also tested positive — ignored self-isolation orders on their return from Europe, and were on their preaching tour until Singh fell ill and died.

     

    The case has stunned India and a popular Punjabi singer based in Canada, Sidhu Moose Wala, released a song about Singh that has been viewed on YouTube more than 2.3 million times in less than two days.

     

    “I passed on the disease… roaming around the village like a shadow of death,” say the lyrics to the song, which Punjab’s police chief Dinkar Gupta has encouraged people to listen to as a warning.

     

    With 873 confirmed coronavirus cases and 19 deaths, India’s toll is lower than other countries afflicted by the pandemic, but experts say many infections have not been detected due to a lack of testing.

  • Indians maintain safe distance as they queue to buy vegetables during a 21-day lockdown

    Indians maintain safe distance as they queue to buy vegetables during a 21-day lockdown

    Indians maintain safe distance as they queue to buy vegetables during a 21-day lockdown

    With its 21-day lockdown, India joined a long list of nations taking extraordinary steps to battle Covid-19 — and its results will determine the future of this worldwide pandemic. Can India help the world avert major catastrophe?
    Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the unprecedented move on Tuesday to put “the entire country on lockdown” for three weeks until April 14. The PM told Indians that saving lives is his “first priority,” requested that people stay inside and reiterated that social distancing is the only way to break the cycle of the infection, which has spread rapidly around the world. “Step outside your house in the next 21 days and you will set the country back by 21 years,” Modi warned.

    This is no exaggeration. Indeed, with a population of over 1.3 billion people, how India responds to this crisis now could determine the trajectory of the Covid-19 pandemic for the entire world. The future of the outbreak largely depends on what happens in large and densely populated countries like India, according to Dr. Michael J Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies programme. Dr. Ryan cautioned on Monday that India must continue to take “aggressive action at the public health level and at the level of society to contain, control, suppress this disease and save lives.”

    India’s Covid-19 challenges
    It’s no surprise that India faces several major hurdles in its fight against Covid-19; insufficient healthcare funding, lack of clean water and hygiene facilities in several regions and the aforementioned high-density population, to name a few. It is estimated that around 420 people live on each square kilometer of land in many of the country’s largest cities — a situation which undoubtedly makes “social distancing” and “self-isolation” impossible without a strictly enforced lockdown policy — and even then, it will still be difficult.

    An effective law governing public healthcare is another glaring gap in India’s fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. While the government has declared the disease a “notified disaster” under the Disaster Management Act – giving certain overriding powers to the central government over states and enabling more funds to be allocated to the crisis — the truth is that India lacks dedicated legislation for a pandemic situation. The primary law it resorts to in governing healthcare emergencies is the 123-year-old colonial-era Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897, which was enacted to fight the bubonic plague.

    India’s preparedness to deal with the global pandemic therefore immediately appears inadequate, especially when viewed in the context of how badly developed countries like Italy, Spain, and the United States are faring — even with their relatively lower population densities and more advanced healthcare systems.

  • Sunway Construction Group Bhd (SunCon) has bagged a RM508 milion contract from National Highways Authority of India

    Sunway Construction Group Bhd (SunCon) has bagged a RM508 milion contract from National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).

    SunCon, in a statement today, said the project was awarded to Sunway Construction Sdn Bhd – RNS Infrastructure Ltd, a consortium formed by Sunway Construction Sdn Bhd and RNS Infrastructure Ltd.

    The project consists of developing a new road and widening of the existing road to four lanes on a 36.75 kilometre highway stretch in the state of Tamil Nadu.

    The project will be operated under the Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM), where NHAI will pay 40 per cent of the project cost during the construction period.

    The remaining 60 per cent will be paid over a period of 15 years as fixed annuity amount.

    HAM is an initiative by the government of India, which was introduced to have a better financial mechanism for road development.

    The project also includes a 15-year operations and maintenance contract which will bring about an additional RM4 million per annum.

    “We are very pleased to clinch our first overseas project for the year as this is part of our plan for geographical diversification focused on Asean and India,” said SunCon managing director Chung Soo Kiong.

    SunCon said the development and widening works of the highway stretches from the Thorapalli Agraharam to the Jittandahalli sections of national highway (NH) 844.

    Work is expected to commence in October and to be completed in two years.

    SunCon’s consortium partner for the project, RNS Infrastructure is an Indian company that provides a wide range of infrastructure construction services such as construction of dams, highways, bridges, tunnels, power houses and residential buildings.

    SunCon previously partnered with RNS Infrastructure in June 2001 for its first two infrastructure projects.