With a mad rush to boost the econ­omy through easy op­tions like open­ing liquor vends, re­lax­ation of cur­few curbs, start­ing of truck move­ment with­out stream­lin­ing in­ter­state modal­i­ties, boost­ing dri­ver con­fi­dence and mass move­ment of mi­grant labour to home states with­out a fool-proof sys­tem in place, in just two days, In­dia has wit­nessed an in­crease in COVID-19 in­fec­tions. His­tory of pan­demics has shown that such tear­ing hurry will fur­ther harm economies and in­crease risks of in­fec­tion to so­ci­ety, says po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Ku­mar San­jay Singh.

WITH RE­LAX­ATIONS IN LOCK­DOWN RE­STRIC­TIONS, even as num­ber of daily pos­i­tive cases are on the rise, it would be re­al­is­tic to as­sume that rate of in­fec­tion is bound to in­crease.

Chen­nai, Mum­bai and Pun­jab give us some point­ers to­wards the po­ten­tial sources of the an­tic­i­pated in­crease.

Chen­nai demon­strated that spots with un­reg­u­lated milling crowd could be­come a petri dish for the virus. The veg­etable mar­kets in Chen­nai tes­ti­fied this. Con­se­quently, veg­etable man­dis -mar­kets, need greater reg­u­la­tion in lock­down 3.0.

Liquor shops have the po­ten­tial of turn­ing sev­eral ar­eas into hotspots. Past two days un­der­scored that, bar­ring a few ex­cep­tions, this group will pose se­vere chal­lenges to any at­tempt at reg­u­la­tion. It will be de­sir­able, there­fore, that a con­tact-free de­liv­ery mech­a­nism be de­vel­oped. Ser­vices of courier and on­line de­liv­ery can be used and the cus­tomer billed for the ser­vice.

Pun­jab has high­lighted the dis­per­sal of the con­ta­gion through mi­grants. It will save the na­tion pre­cious life and re­sources (spent in case of ex­plo­sion of pos­i­tive cases) if strict med­ical pro­to­cols (test­ing, quar­an­tine, etc.) is fol­lowed both at the source and des­ti­na­tion of the re­verse mi­gra­tion.

Dhar­avi demon­strates densely pop­u­lated slum clus­ters, where the bulk of in­for­mal sec­tor’s work­force re­sides, have the po­ten­tial of de­vel­op­ing into hotspots. Hence, open­ing up needs to be ac­com­pa­nied with en­hanced test­ing and trac­ing pro­to­cols in such ar­eas.

It will be sober­ing to re­mem­ber that if in­fec­tions flare up not only will the med­ical fa­cil­i­ties be over­whelmed, but the re­sul­tant dis­rup­tion will serve the death blow from which our econ­omy may not re­cover.

Ku­mar San­jay Singh is As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor in the De­part­ment of His­tory at the Swami Shrad­dhanand Col­lege, Uni­ver­sity of Delhi with spe­cial­i­sa­tion in Mu­ta­tions in In­dian State for­ma­tion post-1947, Ex­tra­or­di­nary laws es­pe­cially In­ter­nal Se­cu­rity Leg­is­la­tions and Hu­man Rights with spe­cial fo­cus on North­east In­dia and Adi­vasi so­ci­ety.