The enormous strain of indias coronavirus lockdown millions of Migrant Workers are struggling to return home and self isolation isnt an option for many so what can be done to lessen the impact this is inside story. Hello and welcome to the program im homage im jerome its been a week since india began the worlds biggest lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus 1300000000 people live in order to stay home in the as around 1600 infections so far but with one of the lowest testing rates in the world scientists fear the number could be much Higher Health workers are trying to track down around 2000 people who stayed at the headquarters of a muslim group in new delhi 128 people who attended a religious gathering there 2 weeks ago have since tested positive 7 have died organizers denied breaking social distancing rules saying they were forced to accommodate visitors after Prime MinisterNarendra Modi announced some measures with just 4 hours notice delhi chief minister has urged police to file a negligence case. Is that icky anybody in the Current Situation it was completely wrong to have held such a big gathering were being told that many who participated in the gathering have now travel to other parts of the country its scary to even think about how many people have come in contact with the disease because of this. A lockdown has stranded millions of Migrant Workers trying to return to their home villages many risked infection by cramming on to crowded trains and buses before transport services stopped last week others have been walking hundreds of kilometers to reach their homes im getting there we walking because we didnt know what was going to happen or if thered be any transport available during this chaotic pandemic my landlord said he would not give us any money or food and asked us to vacate his room and leave. The room and we lost 2 months worth of labor and a landlord told us to leave he stopped giving us any money or food for monks 22nd social distancing has been hard to enforce in the worlds 2nd most populous country hundreds of millions of people live in cramped spaces with poor access to water and sanitation officials are also worried about the spread of Misinformation Police say they will prosecute anyone spreading rumors about the outbreak on social media and messaging apps. All right lets bring in our panel joining us from new delhi barkhad dot a Television Journalist and newspaper columnist also in new delhi chandra bush on the c. E. O. Of the International Forum for Environment Sustainability and technology and in goa me not she ganguli south asia director at Human Rights Watch welcome to you all mean actually let me start with you Human Rights Watch says the lockdown has already disproportionately hurt marginalized communities due to the loss of livelihood and lack of food Shelter Health and other basic needs and theyve urged authorities to adopt measures to protect the most vulnerable so my question is what measures need to be taken. Another measure has to be did you know i was too needy the 1st thing that happened was because this is not i was an announcer of brucie the supply of cheese and i working which means that people who are now i can subsidize your services. No longer have access as the shops are closed and an additional scope and did not have success. Workers in the neediest because thats what the management of the food. That who are employment has he needs to heal quickly to expand its base because i dont think people are going back because it isnt on the top step back hes a purist of them i like to get moved is so the basic social network the Security Services that the services the Public Services that need to be like it need to be. Going on mostly barker how much do religious and sociological factors in india complicate the response to cope with 19. Well i think the biggest complicating more than religion or culture is poverty unlike in any country which has hierarchical societies and perhaps not a fully formed Public Health responses to we are seeing the poorest of couple are actually taking the hit for asthma now he said this very abruptly announced. During member that in essence that and 2 percent of its g. D. P. On health we have 45000000 Migrant Workers and we have more than 90000000 households that live in. Well thats im really dragging the dust to stick because social distancing is sometimes a luxury that not everybody can afford and you know when you have 5 people 6 People Living in one room what does it even mean to tell them to stay at all the 2nd dimension to this is that because so many of these people are transit workers in other words they live somewhere else and they work somewhere else you have small and medium indices virtually sacking them on the spot which is why we saw this mass exodus this massacre of hundreds of thousands of our poorest walking sometimes hundreds of kilometers on foot i dont want to go on many of these stories myself and met a lot of these people absent children as young as 5 in need walking hundreds of kilometers so i think what were really seeing here is many people saying the party was a fork or. A chandra youve written that environmental destruction is one of the underlying causes of this pandemic how does that affect what is currently going on in india. Well i think there are michael reason why we are see zoonotic diseases coming time and time again and environmental destruction obviously is one of the factors it was going to start surely as breeding animals and humans together which is leading to jumping of microbes from animals to humans and thats what we have seen in the past do not it does exist where you look at swine flu bitch happens from big farm in mexico to starts in 2003 which happened from china to gain a better market in china and probably 90 most probably you know 99 percent it is a genetic disease coming out of of the market in china so all one in modern middle destruction is a factor but also there is a cultural factor that is quite prevalent it is not specified to china but i dont buy the culture of eating exotic meat and sometime raw and not getting and not regulating it well is the perp factor and the 4th factor is a themselves animal farming which based on one feel so there are my People Factor which is increasing the intensity and frequency of united diseases as i said this century b. S. This is the 3rd pandemic that we have seen it 20 years which is very rare in last 200 years is either history or and the mix that this is this is probably the highest number of pandemic in law school gates that you can trace in in past 2 centuries i mean actually how much has the lock down been hurting marginalized communities in india edited we have to we have to start looking at the 1st the challenges that a country of india says faces is a insular beneath the trying to contain the a 1000000000 people and spread this bibles is a huge challenge and this is really important because if the theres into the country the problem the problem and services. That believe in peace. Now are in that. If the company decided that it must have a no the point is that there should have been to now were going to have to give mr that the number whether that has to be something where systems are put in place not not in the give 4 hours of the given between the time of the post and i was that logged out and midnight when when that could get and then what has happened is that none of these structures that should have gone well done properly forget the supply chains in terms of rights the fact that as i was reporting on you know the fact that all of these people were being beaten up on the streets now where this is typical what at what is the Port Security that was put in place but what was the shape of that was but it is these are these are not to undermine the challenges of the stick face but this is the big man and not it and it hasnt barkha theres been a lot of outrage due to a video that has circulated online showing indian Health Workers spring a group of migrants with disinfectant what does that say about the state of affairs in india that this is going on right now. Well i just want to separate the strands of the divinity there is the lockdown at the idea of the doctor and i think this country widely accepted as inevitable and necessary i think were seeing different stages of lockdown across the world and i think that where you have to ticking here is the planning and the amount of time and if anything i would argue that this is not that we need to have been planned much earlier we need to shut up borders much earlier and we did it to ourselves for dying so then we planned this properly to the lydian that you speak about that video and to me personally it was extremely disturbing because it was basically these bible workers went to tote or possibly on foot after walking hundreds of kilometers and a fuel efficient spirit that was meant to clean buses was used on these workers and this. Is what it overboard now that has been pushed back from several commentators who say that the missions these are disappointments because i was doing other countries as well but the choice of the fumigation was a chemical thats meant to clean the buses and then there was the basic denied of dignity and to see all these poor men literally behind it together like as if they were mosquitoes the local administration accepted this to be a mistake to be clear this is one district in advance not something thats happening rapidly but i think its its important to also underline that for all of these incidents theres also what many of us do make a noise and there is pushback and theyre up and active measures that are taken but i think you have to understand the gigantic scale of what were dealing with you know you see the americans struggling and you know it took a bit of population numbers where were the worlds most populist you know democracy and were also a democracy so that also makes it in a sense duffer to give these 1300000000 people and just in everybody go down into tools or theres been a lot of confusion about the rollout of the law. Down from your Vantage Point is the way the lockdown being implemented going to be sufficient to try to combat the spread of covert 19 so i think you know on the hindsight i have heard other panelist speak about the problem that the marginalized community in the poor faces i also agree that people are planning better but if you look at the law its amazing in the last one month we have had close to 200 modeling studies that have come out looking at different scenarios and predicting how government should react i think when the case is a little color then and we have announced lockdown is the right step we i believe back across the world who are hacked who are has done a lot on quicker it has seen flattening of the girls much quicker. Will that happen in india we do have to we dont want to but my sense is that people certainly slapped on the world big dollop of love dont you would have had a lot of problems if you would have if you see i dont want to study they also say that in any pandemic you look at bang to me it. Was probably for about 6 months we were able to contain it in 6 months nadji because the bonito bite us was very different it wasnt as infectious as we are seeing in case of discord innovators but if you look at spanish flu that happened in 1000. 00 eating event for 2 years in india you had 2 spikes of spanish flu in the beginning of the year as well as in the end of the year and lot of gardening studies are saying that you might require my people locked down because some question established he does not ensure that you will be able to control despite us in one lock up so i think we need to be mentally prepared for the long haul of the very idea that one long run is going to be sufficient in terms of suppressing this virus i dont think that is going to happen not in india not in us not to invite of the world is that china is already preparing to see the next round of. You know that in prison in numbers that theyre expecting men actually i saw you nodding along to some of what chandra was saying so i want to see if you have a reaction but also i want to ask you specifically about the fact that Human Rights Watch is also reporting that in some parts of india Health Workers have faced discrimination from their neighbors and that landlords have in some cases as attempted to evict them so do you think that stigmatization will increase against doctors and nurses and other medics and health care workers. When often were taught that a disaster is not the best time to promoting the us in my view that is actually the time when values are just to get the best and ignore him so at this point of the day the big issue that will see the number of people who are in for instance is even in the us. And supposing that a bigoted treatment in india be suitable in the northeast now if your answer has in the past had problems where there has been a tendency of the. Stigmatization and therefore it is very ordinary that as a set that this is going to be a dog it has to be society which means that there are instructed not to come from the top at least the police have to be to order to get there not when they are enforcing this is not a police state in course in a lot of peoples but it means that people are very importantly that people are not behaving in a wee bit honestly any worse or we had or even had reports of anyone cool being mean. We need to just buy them eat burgers because they were planning from planning for months that it is it was planted for us now this kind of behavior is not and then has to be various not messaging at this point and to make sure that india comes through this with with because as i had suspected a state and erasmus of and this is really neat i keep merging because the Prime Minister has not was. When he summoned people to come out of my email and said great at what the market drugs this is a man in command that owner was in that same camera. To be messaged like to ensure people survive this. One and not adopt all the world because of the need to do it and they also have to be excluded i suspect being in the way they treat their friends in the r. K. Look to me like you wanted to jump in and add to what mean i actually was saying so please go ahead. No i was just going to say then weve seen the stigma de sion against pilots of men actually mention but even against doctors doctors and nurses and Health Workers are being discriminated against weve had reports of course still interviewed people being evicted from their who lives and look not clear whether. Journalists. Have come under pressure from neighbors i had an argument to be the neighborhood people who were asked me why i am im going up to the port and its very difficult to explain to people that this is an essential duty for journalists and many other people doctors have had what is obvious to be in front of the front of the line on that one but you literally find yourself arguing with people and needing to explain to them that some of us need to be out there and do our job so i think between stigmatization is a major issue and its not unique to india or see this kind of the underbelly of society speak of inequality of prejudice because people are scared they panic and theyre out in whatever we that they can and it doesnt make it right and it has to be institutional protection against all of this because otherwise its people who are attention services cannot do their jobs chunder let me ask you specifically about the problem of misinformation just how rampant is it right now how much of a challenge is it and try to effectively combat the coronavirus so let me break this. I think the gentle message that people have got and i think we need to moderate that message is as gods going to be over in 3 weeks if everyone is separate he is strictly enforced and therefore you see you all see a panic reaction of people when the person like barker goes out they will feel as if hes biting some color on that ok i think this message needs to be moderated this is a vital which is infectious but it is not so inspects yes that if someone comes out from outside is going to go in fact everyone in a colony so i think that there has to be in much more moderated message on infectiousness of this disease i think we have not done that in fact trying to the community in india has not done that thats not why number 2 is we are at one place i think the are very nice in terms of providing Testing Facilities to people one of the success of a child he was that if people are sort that matter any disease is that people have access to easy access to Testing Facilities so if youre scared if youre worried if you feel you have got it if you have you know any kind of psychological problem you quickly go and get the test done that is becoming a major problem in india the current protocol that has been set in place to do that testing is extremely complicated we have not got the quick testing case that countries like korea and others are using are and must i think if those takes proper messaging and i contesting is also a psychological tool that we need to recognize it is not only about you know finding and isolating people it has that role to play a major role is that but it is also people who are really really scared they want to know that theyre safe or not and easy testing will have to be made available irrelevant to them. Yes i mean actually india has launched a massive search to track down those who attended this event there was organized at a mosque in new delhi dozens of people were tested positive for corona virus and now there are authorities that are accusing the group of ignoring the threat of covert 19 and there are some who are calling on the authorities to file a criminal case many worry that this incident has the potential to stoke religious tension what do you think but im afraid that i think it was alluded to earlier because india theyre not house believe for one. But not get driven by need that they got engine which is which has nothing to do in the motives and it was created it was to deceive he said for posting this which isnt what my heard of for a number of. Number of theres enough. And this kind of e