Virtual meetings order of the day amid pandemic

Virtual meetings have become the order of the day in these days of the pandemic. If MP Sunny Deol is inaugurating projects virtually sitting in New Delhi, Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Ishfaq and his deputy Additional Deputy Commissioner (General) Tejinder Pal Singh Sandhu are busy presiding over Zoom meetings in an attempt to keep the wheels of the administration moving. Earlier this week, Sandhu took charge of the District Employment and Training Department. Officials were told to reach out to the masses through virtual placement camps. He delivered a motivational speech at cyber-space meeting and exhorted officials to ensure that adequate employment opportunities were generated for both rural and urban youth. “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. The future depends on what you do today. Write your own book instead of reading someone else’s book about success. Do not worry about automation. Do not think that automation is taking away our jobs, on the contrary more jobs are being created. Countries grow, for instance, when more people work, when each job in the economy becomes more productive and when people move from low to higher productivity jobs. Jobs can also contribute immensely to the accumulation of human capital and promote social stability. I agree that it is difficult for industrialists to set up units on the border area of Gurdaspur. But we should keep trying. It is for the political establishment to encourage businessmen to establish their units here after they are given incentives,” he said. The officer, by taking up the cause of businesses in this border area, virtually hit the nail on the head in this virtual meeting!

There are only frenemies In politics

In politics nothing is permanent. Not even relationships. Sri Hargobindpur MLA Balwinder Singh Laddi learnt this adage the hard way. He was once a dyed-in-the-wool loyalist of the Bajwa brothers—MP Partap Singh Bajwa and Qadian MLA Fateh Jung Singh Bajwa. Everybody knows how the siblings secured him the Congress ticket in the 2012 and 2017 Assembly elections. The equation carried an aura of permanency attached to it. However, he has now fallen apart from the Bajwas. The trigger is said to be a land deal which later turned sour. The politically astute Cabinet Minister Tripat Rajinder Singh Bajwa, considered to be one of the most powerful of Congress politicians in this district, barring of course his Cabinet colleague and Dera Baba Nanak MLA Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, saw an opportunity in this break-up. Opportunity knocks only once and the sagacious Tripat heard the knock loud and clear. He managed to convince Laddi to jump onto his bandwagon. The MLA can now be seen at each and every function in this district where the minister is the chief guest. In this way, the Tripat has killed two birds with one stone. On the one hand he has managed to pull the rug from under the feet of the Bajwas—his long time political adversaries— while on the other hand he has strengthened his own bastion, so to speak. The man, for sure, knows how and when to balance or imbalance a political equation. “One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician’s objective. Election and power are,” said a wag. Was that barb aimed at Tripat or was it meant for Laddi? Considering that both stand to benefit from each other’s company in the 2022 Assembly polls, the barb is perhaps aimed at both. On the other hand Fateh Bajwa remains unfazed. He calls Laddi’s departure from his camp “good riddance.” His advice to his former protégé, “Do not be mad because I do not care anymore. Be mad because I once did and you were too blind to see it.”

Wearing a mask works like a medicine

Mask is your only vaccine till a real one hits the stands. Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Ishfaq’s emphasis on this phrase was too sharp to be missed while delivering some dos and don’ts to residents on his Facebook page on the topic of ‘winters and Covid.’ He told his audience that elaborate plans have already been chalked out to distribute the vaccine in the first phase to 12,000 health workers. Addressing residents he said, “It is heartening to note that the positivity rate in Gurdaspur, pegged at 0.5 per cent, is the lowest among all districts of Punjab. Having said that, please do not let your guard down. Right now we are doing 2,000 tests every day. This figure will be increased to 4,000 next week. Infections caused by many respiratory viruses, including Coronavirus, swell in winter and drop in summer. Evidence also suggests that a small seasonal effect will probably contribute to bigger outbreaks in winter on the basis of what is known about how the virus spreads and how people behave in the winters. People will be interacting more often indoors in places with poor ventilation. This will obviously increase the risk of transmission,” he averred.