‘Combined efforts needed to combat the crisis’

Barindermeet Singh, MLA, Gurdaspur

Unprecedented times require unprecedented efforts. Nobody was prepared for a disruption of this scale and magnitude. It will require a combined effort from all stakeholders to combat the crisis. Nobody would have ever thought a mutant flu virus could turn our world topsy-turvy.

When lockdown-1 was announced, the first thing I did was to spray disinfectants across the length and breadth of the city through my workers. I myself took part in the exercise.

Since Day 1, I have not left the constituency and will not abandon it till things stabilise.

A whopping 20,000 ration kits were distributed through the Kartar Singh Pahra charitable trust, named after my grandfather.

Unlike other leaders who are out to take political mileage from the pandemic, which is indeed a shameful act, I made certain the kits were distributed among all strata of society, particularly the downtrodden.

Right now, as I see things, the world is unstable and feeble with insecurity. Under these trying circumstances, we must be its strength offering our soul as stability.

I got in touch with health officials and converted the old Civil Hospital, located in the heart of the city, to one big isolation ward.

Sanitary napkins, too, were distributed by me in the slum areas.

I tried reaching out to people who could not reach out to me, courtesy the curfew.

The virus is rewriting our imaginations. What felt impossible has become thinkable. We are getting a different sense of our place in history. We know we are entering a new world, a new era.

This is the time for all of us, irrespective of our political affiliations, to rise in unison to fight the disease.

I know humanity is passing through its darkest hour. But I also see a dawn. And remember that the darkest hours are just before the dawn.

(As told to Ravi Dhaliwal)