Sugar-coated warning: Coronavirus-shaped 'sandesh' in Kolkata for awareness

Sugar-coated warning

Call it their creative best or worst, owners of a sweetmeat chain in Kolkata are presenting the deadly coronavirus with a different taste, literally. Before you decide to boycott the shop, Hindustan Sweets, and warn others about it, here is the deal. They are selling a sandesh, shaped like the novel coronavirus, with a red spherical body covered with spikes. By blending one of Bengal's most savoured sweetmeat with the name of the pandemic, the owners aim to lift "the spirits of the people". To buttress this claim, they are also giving a pamphlet bearing anti-Covid-19 slogans and safety measures. Now that the offer has become viral, will it lead to curious customers thronging the shop’s branches across Kolkata, defying the lockdown? At least the local authorities won’t find this sweet.

High-powered attacks 
 

The Rajasthan government has formed a committee under the leadership of former Union finance secretary Arvind Mayaram to advise it on the economic road map for the state as and when the lockdown is lifted. Meanwhile, the West Bengal government has constituted a committee of eminent economists, including Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee and Jishnu Das; health experts like the former director at the World Health Organization, Swarup Sarkar; a doctor, Sukumar Mukherjee; and former health secretary J V R Prasada Rao. The West Bengal government is also making efforts to showcase the combined wisdom of its eight-member advisory group. There is more competition on this as Maharashtra's Uddhav Thackeray showcases his crisis management skills, as does Chhattisgarh's Bhupesh Baghel and Rajasthan's Gehlot, who has been exhibiting the "Bhilwara model" to contain the virus.

Redressing grievances

Since the Centre's Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances launched a "national monitoring dashboard on Covid-19 grievances" on April 1, the portal has been inundated with coronavirus-related complaints. It had received 10,659 cases of public grievance as of April 6. The number of cases registered was 333 on April 1, and 2,343 on April 6. The department has issued advisories to all ministries/departments and state governments to ensure disposing of Covid-19 related cases on priority, preferably in three days. The disposal of public grievances pertaining to migrant labourer issues and availability of essential commodities has been given the highest priority. It had also asked ministries/departments to track tweets and reports on television channels on these issues.