Stay masked in public places necessary u turn in delhi is a lesson for rest of india

Stay masked in public places necessary u turn in delhi is a lesson for rest of india

The Delhi Disaster Management Authority has done the right thing today by bringing back the mask mandate for public places and the Rs 500 fine for violating it. This begs the question, did states remove or dilute mask mandates prematurely? Yes. In Delhi for example, which is now seeing an uptick in Covid infection numbers, some experts are connecting this directly to the DDMA decision on March 31 that there would no longer be any fine for not wearing a mask.

To be sure the government also said at the time that this did not mean that it endorsed people not wearing masks, and indeed it would be conducting intensive campaigns to promote the wearing of masks. But this kind of mixed messaging is extremely poor pandemic governance. India, unlike say several countries in East Asia, did not have a pre-existing masking culture. It took long months of sustained efforts by different social stakeholders to persuade the masses of the necessity of masking against Covid. Rushing to add doubts to this fragile matrix was very irresponsible.

Among the other states where a rise of infections has now been flagged by the Centre, Haryana, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh also did away with the penalty for not wearing the mask in public places at the beginning of this month. The trend in infections since then has forced Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to bring back the mask mandates in select districts. But both for people and enforcement agencies, this patchy mandate is again a recipe for confusion. More than two years into the present pandemic, all governments should have internalized the importance of clear messaging.

The way in which the question of closing schools has once again come back to the table in NCR is furthermore a reminder of everything that is at stake in the premature ditching of the first and most inexpensive line of defense against Covid-19. Thankfully the overall caseload continues to be small and there are no worrying signs on the hospitalization front either. By putting the guard back up in a timely way, we can hopefully regain safe ground.