Watch Pradeep Bhandari ground report from Western UP. Listen to the voice of farmers and labourers from Western UP @PMOIndia@pradip103#IndiaFightsCorona#lockdown2 pic.twitter.com/4DG16CjurC
— Jan Ki Baat (@jankibaat1) April 29, 2020
Aimed at controlling the spread of Novel Coronavirus in the world’s most densely populated 1.35 billion huge nation, as the Lockdown 3.0 started approaching its final days, Pradeep Bhandari, the founder of ‘Jan Ki Baat’ reached Siwaya village of Muzaffarnagar district, 135 km west of New Delhi in Uttar Pradesh state. The agriculture sector, the supply chain and the demand stimulus – all of these amalgamated into this wide sugarcane field of countryside reflects India’s COVID preparedness; its strengths, vulnerabilities and the unadulterated levels of awareness altogether.
A middle aged sugarcane farmer says that his village, so far has no COVID case and his fellow inhabitants are vigilant enough to report to authorities the arrival of somebody from the outside areas. The nearby Mandi, where farmers usually sell their produce lies a little over 50 km away in Meerut has been designated as a COVID red zone. Although, the farm produces, as they come under essential services can be sold off even in the red zone like Meerut – but this Siwaya farmer prefers not to. “The Mandi is usually way too crowded!,” he exclaimed while emphasizing upon “doori” (social distancing) and cleanliness measures to combat the COVID spread. The villagers are selling off their vegetables amongst themselves and fending off the surplus green veggies to their cattle, since conventional enough, nobody is allowed from outside to sold off the cattle-feed inside the village.
Pradeep Take
Villagers are following the lockdown measures in-place and their awareness levels are at par fine when it comes to combating COVID with respect to the individual/community alertness required.
Instead of going off to the farm Mandis to sell off their produce, Farmers are adopting the ‘community living’ mode, in which they tend to consume their produces by selling them off to their own fellow village inhabitants.
The farm laborers are being paid Rs. 250 a day during the ongoing sugarcane sowing season, and together they express satisfaction over the measures taken by the government to control the spread of Novel Coronavirus.
SHARE
