Amid much speculation as to how the country is going to strike that fine balance that would give way to resumption of economic activities without diluting the singular objective of saving lives from the coronavirus pandemic, Central government on Wednesday released a set of guidelines in this regard. This was a much-needed move since there is no way one can deny that indefinite continuance of the current ‘full stop’ state of national economy would only mean greater economic difficulties. Taking it as the first instalment of a series meant for effecting a gradual lifting of the full embargo, it can be defined as appreciative so far as the intention is concerned, but lacks clarity over certain areas. In this regard it also needs mentioning that the most important role to be played here will be the state administrations since any deviation from these laid out norms will only result in counter-productive results. In a way thus, it can be said that the administrative machinery of the respective states in general and their decentralised units comprising the local administrations in particular are all set to embark on a very important task of implementing the new relaxed guidelines and their collective efficiency will determine the next course of national action of the Covid-19 challenge.

The guidelines which will come into effect from April 20 has incorporated quite a number of easing measures both for agriculture and industry and the most important pick will be the priority to set the wheels of rural economy in motion. Being the onset of harvesting season, it was extremely necessary and freeing the movement of men and machinery of the agriculture sector will at least ensure that there arises no food grain crisis for the coming months, despite there are sufficient reserves as of now. In this regard, an unavoidable practical difficulty that will arise is how to make sure the large number of migrant labourers now currently stranded in metros and cities get back to fields, who traditionally have served as farm hands. Without addressing this, the proposal of easing lockdown norms will remain on paper only. This will perhaps explain the current restive behaviour of the stranded migrant labourers who desperately long to return to their villages for engaging in agri activities. Inter-state movement should commence, of course maintaining the Standard Operating Procedure and that will mean greater coordination between the states.

The positive thing is that there will be a time gap of at least three more days to build up this coordination mechanism, unlike the announcement of the first phase of lockdown which was sudden and gave no chance for anyone to make any meaningful arrangement.

It will now be this inter-state collaboration that will determine the efficacy of the lockdown relaxations.