Light a Candle

The Hindu Newsletter - Light a Candle Friday 03, April 2020 [alt_text]( The Evening Wrap Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. We hope you are staying home and staying safe. Here are the big stories that you need to follow today: Light a Candle On the 10th day of the 21-day national lockdown, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked all Indians to demonstrate a collective will to fight the coronavirus. As a symbolic gesture towards building confidence and solidarity, he appealed to the people to light candles and lamps, or display mobile flashlights for nine minutes on April 5 at 9 p.m. “There is no bigger force than our conviction and resolve,” he said. Modi termed the coronavirus threat the “darkness that engulfs us” and added, “We have to take our poor brethren towards light and certainty. To defeat this darkness, we have to shine the light in every direction.” You can read the highlights of the PM’s video message [here](. Opposition leaders criticised the Prime Minister’s message as mere symbolism. They pointed out that no further welfare or support measures have been announced for those suffering the economic consequences of the lockdown. “What we expected from you today was FAP II, a generous livelihood support package for the poor, including for those categories of poor who were totally ignored by the FM on 25-3-2020. Every working man and woman, from business person to daily wage earner, also expected you to announce steps to arrest the economic slide and re-start the engines of economic growth,” Congress leader P Chidambaram said in one of a series of tweets. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor called it a “a feel-good moment curated by India’s Photo-Op Prime Minister." COVID Watch - The Numbers The count is 2817 cases in India, with the death toll at 79. Globally, the number of cases has crossed 1 million, standing at 1,034,098 with the death toll at 54,463. You can find a detailed tracker for state-wise coronavirus cases, deaths, and testing rates [here.]( The Health Ministry has said that at least 647 cases from 14 states are linked to the Tablighi Jamaat religious convention that took place in March in Delhi’s Nizamuddin area. That event continues to be a nodal point for infections, with some states reporting sharp rises in COVID-19 positive cases as a result. Tamil Nadu, for instance, has reported 102 positive cases, taking the total number in the state to 411. In this [analysis](, our data team has mapped how this cluster has led to the spread of the coronavirus. The Uttar Pradesh government, meanwhile, has said it will impose the National Security Act against some Tablighi Jamaat patients, who are accused of misbehaving with nurses at a district hospital in Ghaziabad. In international news, more than 900 people died in Spain over the past 24 hours for the second day running. The rate of new infections and deaths, however, have continued to come down. The global death toll has now [crossed 50,000](. Acting in time Maharashtra narrowly escaped a super-spreader event like Delhi’s Tablighi Jamaat convention. It had cancelled a much bigger Tablighi Ijtema (congregation), with an estimated attendance of around 45,000 delegates, scheduled to take place in Vasai on March 14 and 15. From Mumbai, our correspondent Alok Deshpande reports that the [Home Department moved swiftly in the first week of March]( and convinced the organisers to call off the event. Confirming this, Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, in an exclusive interview with The Hindu, explained how the government realised the inherent danger of such a huge gathering and negotiated with the organisers to cancel the programme. “The State government was alert to the spread of novel coronavirus in Maharashtra, and we were keeping a close watch on the havoc created by it in the world outside. When we realised that a gathering of over 45,000 people at one place for two days could be a great health risk, not only to them but to others, we decided to take firm action,” Deshmukh said. Questions over PM Fund The government has sent conflicting signals on the question of foreign donations to the new Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund, better known as PM-CARES, [according to our reporting today](. Initially, Indian ambassadors were directed to [mobilise donations from abroad](, with SWIFT code details made available in order to accept such contributions. However, the Centre now seems to have taken a step back, indicating that foreign funds would be accepted only from individuals and foundations, with details for foreign donations unavailable for now. The PM-CARES fund does not seem to have any website with details of objectives, income and expenditure as yet, raising concerns about transparency and accountability. Objections to domicile rules The Jammu BJP has raised concerns over the [new J&K domicile rules notified]( yesterday. It has raised two issues regarding the rules with the national leadership and Home Minister Amit Shah. One, the new rules have relaxed the criteria of who can claim domicile; and two, they have only reserved lower level jobs for locals, with higher level jobs open for all. “According to what we gathered from the notification, only Group D jobs will be reserved for locals, while others are open for all. We have been told that the provincial services board will take care of some levels of hiring keeping locals in mind, but that is just oral assurance, the notification itself does not reassure us,” [said a senior leader in Jammu BJP](. In Brief: The Asian Development Bank reduced its growth forecast for India for the financial year 2020-21, saying it is likely to slow down to 4% amid the global recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Bharat Biotech is getting into [development and testing of a vaccine]( against COVID-19 called CoroFlu, as part of an international collaboration of virologists and vaccine makers. CoroFlu is a one-drop COVID-19 nasal vaccine. It is built on the “backbone” of a flu vaccine that has been shown to be safe and well-tolerated in humans, in Phase I and Phase II clinical trials, the Hyderabad-headquartered vaccine-maker said. That’s it for this edition of The Evening Wrap. We’ll see you on Monday. You are receiving this email because you are a user of [thehindu.com]( If you do not wish to receive any such emails, [unsubscribe here.](mailto:rm-0b4rj1qzbf2f90kauhqqkhbysa8hk3s@newsalert.thehindu.com?subject=Unsubscribe&body=You will be unsubscribed from our mailing list.) To ensure you continue to receive emails from The Hindu in your inbox, please add newsletters.th@newsalert.thehindu.com to your contact. If you can't see the mailer, please [click here.]( Group Sites [The Hindu]( | [இந்து தமிழ் திசை]( | [Business Line]( | [BL on Campus]( | [Sportstar]( | [Frontline]( | [The Hindu Centre]( | [Images]( | [roofandfloor]( | [Classifieds]( Copyright @ 2019, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. 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