After observing lockdown for close to a month, now people of Telangana are feeling hopeful and positive that we are slowly inching towards normalcy.
PM Modi said during his televised speech that lockdown curbs would be eased in areas with lower or no incidence of COVID 19, after May 3rd. However, the extension is effective until April 30th. As May 1st is a national holiday, on account of May Day, which falls on Friday, then the country will go into the weekend. This lockdown comes with a hefty price tag, as it brought the economic activity, to a standstill barring a handful of industries that produce essential products and companies that offer essential services, all other public sector, and private units shut down their operations completely. Rough estimates say that economy has been losing close to Rs 40,000 crores a day on account of lockdown. On the count -21 days, cost India a whopping 8.4 Lakh crores and the extended lockdown will double this economic pain.
If you see, daily there is a great exodus of migrant labour. More than half million are just waiting to return home, and today only the policy for shifting them to their places has been announced. Therefore the economic activities will remain in deep hibernation for some more time now while acute poverty of unimaginable proportion in rural homes, once Corona threat vanishes is set to be the next serious concern.
The present government liquidated the country’s accumulated wealth to keep the fiscal deficit within limits. It also spirited out RS 1.7 lakh crores from the contingency reserves of RBI, assiduously conserved over time, with the tacit help of a willing custodian. Profitable PSUs paid high dividends repeatedly from the reserves. They are nudged to buy back Government stake in other PSUs. LIC, an all-weather milking cow, doubled its investment in risky PSUs from Rs 11.4 lakh crores to Rs 22.64 lakh crores, depleting it’s cash reserves by whopping Rs 10.7 lakh crores between 2014 and 2019. While revenue receipts were dwindling, Government announced a generous tax cut for our most beloved corporates.
When Covid 19 struck, our economy was already in meltdown, with ruling dispensation indulging in ritualistic denials. Unless some shrewd minds put heads together it’s very difficult for the country to come out of this mess. Lest the killer pathogen, Corona puts the economy too on a ventilator.

After finishing Jairam Ramesh’s book on Krishna Menon, another book “Journey Through Turbulent Times." An Autobiography Of HJ DORA,  a former Head of the police force of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh.was readily available with me, which I could finish it in 2-3 days.  This 272 pages book deals with how piquant situations were tackled and averted by HJ Dora. This I picked up because Dora (not be mistaken with of the kid cartoon character) was a close acquaintance of my father (I can’t say he was a friend, like many of his contemporaries).
The autobiography titled above gives a fairly accurate account of several developments in the recent history of undivided Andhra Pradesh. The narrative technique employed by Dora effortlessly transports the reader into those days.
As a customary, the initial chapters deal with the writers' childhood, college, and University days.  Later he went to talk about his determination to join All India Services. He recalls vividly his training period and subsequent postings etc. Needless to say, the personal experiences of an officer of the caliber of Dora would be of immense value to any police department as every development explained in the book, has a valuable lesson in it.
He worked in various capacities as CP Vijayawada, CP Hyderabad, CMD APSRTC, CID Head later DGP. When he took over the reins as DGP, his biggest contribution to the state was the control of Left-wing Extremism. Any reader of this book expects that he would give a more detailed account of his experience as he took on the most powerful People’s War Group. For the reasons best known to him,  he merely narrated some of the sensational Naxalite attacks and how the police force which was at the receiving end turned the corner and hit back. Ultimately it was during his tenure that PW leadership had rolled back all its squads from AP and moved to Chhattisgarh.
I was prompted to read this book as my father always expressed to me that Dora was a very upright officer. I must admit that I was a little disappointed as I was hoping to read about secretive details of the strategies and tactics employed in fighting LWE in the Telangana Region. There are many instances which still are like mysteries wrapped in enigma on how the police managed to track Naxal teams or how they infiltrated, or how the police managed to win the hearts and minds of people. Or maybe he deliberately left out details of those counter-insurgency strategies he devised in this book so that he could deal with them in another book? This is the third book, so let us wait for another book for more details.

I decided that this lockdown period is the best time for me to start reading "A Chequered Brilliance, the many lives of VK Krishna Menon."
I got this from my younger brother Venu who got this from the author Jai Rama Ramesh on my request.
I wanted to whet my appetite to know more about Mr. V K Krishna Menon as I knew some anecdotal information about him. 
The author Jairam Ramesh doesn’t need any introduction, but I'm amazed that he is making time to author so many books. He wrote several highly acclaimed books including “Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature and Intertwined Lives.”
I had this book for almost 4 months but its volume was a deterrent but now that we are not even stepping out to run our regular errands. Time in my hands gave me the courage to open this book.
From last December onwards, India’s controversial Defence Minister, VK Krishna Menon was in the news, courtesy a well-researched book. There are few other biographies on VK Krishna Menon.  Through this book I understand, that though he was a versatile genius, he didn’t get the full recognition he deserved for the services he rendered to the nation in its formative years. He was branded as Communist and forgotten. His speeches in the UN for hours together, sipping black tea/coffee, and countering the arguments of Zafarulla Khan of Pakistan, on Kashmir, are not known to the current generation. The result is a biography that is unusual in range, in tone, in breadth. Its a survey of history is fresh and fascinating. The archival material the author had tracked down is very unique.
What comes through it all is that in the fight for Independence and shaping of the Republic in its early years Mr. Menon’s place was alongside Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, and Azad. Mr. JaiRam even feels obliged to declare that “this biography does not intend to eulogise Krishna Menon for his numerous contributions nor castigate him for his many sins. It is instead meant to be a clinically objective narrative of his chequered life based almost entirely on  contemporary documentary evidence.”
The roles he played, not only in India before and after Independence, but also in all the issues ranging from Korea, and Vietnam, to Suez and Hungary, come alive in the pages of this book, thanks to the technique the author has followed -- reproducing letter after letter. The reader gets the feeling that he is listening to Krishna Menon, explaining every crisis of the world and the steps he took in the name of India to resolve it.
The author really gave a wonderful narration of Menon’s death. It seems he asked Indira Gandhi to see him that day to talk to her about the recently concluded visit of Shah of Iran. However it was only a matter of time, and around 10 pm on 5th October 1974, he told his long time helper to make him a cup of tea. And said that this might be his last. And words were indeed prophetic. He suffered a heart attack shortly after at 2.15 am, and early morning of Sunday, 6th October, the world’s greatest tea-drinker who had guzzled 20 to 30 cups of tea daily for almost half a century, passed away”
The book is a masterpiece by Jairam Ramesh, which I would recommend everyone to read without fail. 

In the wake of the Corona pandemic, social media is flooded with Chinese conspiracy theories along with do's and don't messages. Most of these messages are very unreliable even though they may present a very believable logic.
What grabbed my attention were two reports by two different Telugu channels. These stories give indirect credence to the social media report that is already in circulation.
As per the report, the first coronavirus case was reported on Dec 8th, 2019. But the local Chinese Hubei Province (Wuhan) did not notify people until the end of December. And China has come out with the information about the contagiousness of the Virus only on January 20
 China kept the world in dark for 6 to 7 weeks about how rapidly contagiousness this virus was,  it would have mushroomed into a scary global health emergency.
But the point in case here is that China has been guilty of the non-disclosure also during SARS health crises and the milk adulteration scandal of 2008 too. 
Historically dictatorships have shown an inherent tendency of not allowing bad news to go up the ranks, lest this ends up costing careers and perks. Fears that the real source of Coronavirus is from a laboratory in Wuhan, which is linked to its covert biological weapon program give its intentions of global dominance. The Chinese government is yet to admit the “accidental” pathogen leakage as probable cause for virus outbursts. But if the news has even an iota of truth, behind it, then China needs to be castigated and ostracised by the international community for its unethical ways to gain global supremacy. But with the disclosures that it had also developed an “antidote” for the SARS virus which again originated from Wuhan in 2002. A typical arms race where procurement and hoarding of not only traditional but also biological weapons (if it’s true) give a new meaning to the modern warfare is nothing short of an alarming proposition for the whole world. When nations with intentions of securing borders pile up weapons of mass destruction to counter threats from enemy countries, we shouldn’t forget that we are inching closure to doomsday. Meanwhile, Novel Coronavirus has gradually spread across the world, and many countries have taken it seriously to contain it. But China has become a hub of international business activities, the chances of restricting the spread of nCoV appear challenging.