Don’t use credit cards like this!

The pandemic is a healthcare monstrosity from which it is very difficult to escape, and any mass gathering is proscribed by men of science. It has got nothing to do with any political doctrine or any partisan approach of any kind across time and space. The virus spreads by close contact and, as latest evidence suggests, also by air. This has made any gathering in large numbers almost suicidal.

It is in this context that the demonstration on May 26 in Delhi to observe six months of the agitation by farmer bodies to protest against the allegedly anti-farmer legislations has to be viewed. Demonstrations and dialogue, acrimonious and pugnacious, have always been a part of Indian democracy. Those who are organising the gathering and the political parties who are encouraging them are flouting the basic and universally followed norms of distancing during these troubled times.

One has to remember that only last month Madras High Court pulled up the Election Commission for allowing unbridled campaigning involving public meetings in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry. Earlier the Uttarakhand government came in for criticism for allowing the dip in the Ganges in Kumbh in April.

In the last week of March 2020, when the lockdown was announced, hundreds of agitators in Kolkata’s Park Circus maidan who were protesting against the proposed CAA and NRC, left the venue of protest to abide by the restrictions. They left after about 75 days of protest but devised a creative option to leave shoes or apparels at the protest site with their names on it.

The continued farmer protests and its escalation have triggered concerns that it might spread the infection afresh even as large parts of north India continue to battle a savage second surge that is claiming well over 4,000 each day for the past few weeks.