It has now been more than four months and the world is faced with a grave danger; not just to the systems and institutions, not just to trade and commerce, not just to travel and tour, but to the very existence of life. The scale of this crisis is global, and a matching response to it can be framed only if all the countries and the transnational institutions get together. It is not within the capacity of any single country, or any single global institution to stand up to this challenge, and mitigate all the effects around the globe. But this is the macro picture. There is another way of looking at it, and that is a bottom up approach. All the governments in the world, and all the administrative and political units in different countries, will have to come up with customised and situation specific measures to effectively counter the impact of this crisis. Looking at the covid crisis from this perspective, the administration in J&K has to sit down and review the policies framed from the day one of this crisis. All the initiatives taken up till now should be put to a severe evaluation.
This will make it possible for us to find out what went wrong, what could have been avoided, and where are the inadequacies. After this wider review new policies, with fresh vigour and latest inputs from the ground, can be framed. This would definitely be more efficient, than to stick to the older format endlessly. Since, and we all know it, the covid impact will retain for a longer time, it is better if we renew our policies from time to time, and also put in place a mechanism for feedback from the ground. After this latest round of lockdown, when things will start opening up, the government needs to talk more openly about what are its plans up ahead. People are, right now, scared as well as confused. The spike in positive cases, and also in the number of deaths, have instilled fear in the minds of the people. At the same time there are uncertainties about economy and livelihood. All this has to be addressed by the administration to meet this challenge.