Shobha Warrier has extensively covered the Sabarimala issue for Rediff.com. She is the author of His Days with Bapu: Gandhi's Personal Secretary Recalls among several books. You can e-mail the author at shobhaw@rediff.co.in
'India was fortunate to have a late entry into the pandemic; even the first wave entered India 2-3 months after many other countries experienced it.' 'Similarly, the second wave reached here after other countries went through it.' 'Despite having seen what other countries faced, we didn't ramp up our infrastructure sufficiently enough.' 'We remained highly under prepared.'
'The future looks quite bleak unless we ramp up testing and start vaccinating on a war footing.'
'The administration started intruding into the kitchens and bedrooms of the local community.'
'For the first time in 50 years the people of Lakshadweep who have till now never raised their hands, got out on the streets and started raising their voices.'
'We may be weak now, but the importance of the Congress cannot be denied.'
'We must encourage ambitious leaders and not stifle them.'
'We behaved as if this disease is not a problem for India.' 'We acted as if it would go away. But it didn't go away; it exploded.'
'What the government should do is to use the vaccine judiciously, not just to prevent a third wave alone, but to stop the number of deaths happening in the interim.'
'What a saint he was. What a godly person he was.'
'The vaccine policy should be such that all people should get the vaccine free.'
'Each cyclone has its own identity and its own behaviour based on the environmental conditions in the ocean and in the atmosphere.'
'Storms push a lot of water into land, then there is heavy rainfall due to the cyclone.' 'Along with this, we see the gradual rising of the sea level.' 'We see this during and after the latest Cyclone Tauktae.' 'This kind of overlapping events are increasing and we do not know much about how to tackle them.'
'Here is a woman who has got widespread appreciation for her work.' 'Social media was full of posts wanting her as the chief ministerial candidate.' 'This kind of popularity did not go well within the party.' 'See, today the party is Pinarayi Vijayan!'
'Both the Centre and the states cannot say that they have been taking good care of public health.'
'The BJP will not be able to create dictatorship of the kind it is perhaps dreaming of.' 'We have Bengal as the biggest example.'
'Are they assuming that by the end of May or the 15th of June, we will see the end of the pandemic?'
'If you pay Rs 1,000, you get a special queue.' 'If you pay Rs 500, there will be another shorter queue.' 'There will be a separate queue for Rs 300.' 'Is this the way you give vaccine to the people?'
'And that means all of us have to be very careful.'
'We don't have any more time.' 'We should close down, and vaccinate as many people as possible.'
'Unless some serious steps like complete closedown are taken, it will have disastrous consequences.'
'Even with 3 lakh cases a day, we have saturated our resources.' 'It is scary to even think what will happen when the number doubles.'
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