MyVoice: Views of our readers 22nd April 2021

Earth Day

Earth Day is a truly wonderful movement and the Canopy Project is well-conceived and truly innovative. They work by training local people in creating tree nurseries and planting out and maintaining the emerging tree.

As UNICEF says: "To achieve the Global Goals all children everywhere need to learn about the climate crisis and how to tackle it. That's why we're supporting The World's Lesson in asking children to write a short message on why learning about climate change matters to them.

Finally it's everyone's responsibility in the world as a citizen of the world to protect our environment and we need to give our future generation's clean environment. The world is facing serious life and death issues due to the spread of the present second wave of Pandemic is due to basically the result of unhygienic conditions and man made mistakes only. We need to give importance to health and a healthy environment. It is being the need of the hour. Let's protect our earth by all means.

Kanagiri SN Prasad, Hyderabad

Keep religion out of pandemic

The Tablighi Jamaat congregation held at Nizamuddin in April 2020, will continue to remain in the people's psyche as the main contributor in spreading Covid-19, in several parts of the country as the participants hailed from almost all states of the country. The rapid and sudden spurt in the spread of the pandemic at that time was particularly palpable after the participants in the congregation had returned to their homes – and the Centre was quite right in attributing the spread to this cause, although the AAP and other political parties played politics in this regard, tried to underplay it, in order to give vent to their anti-Centre and anti-establishment agenda, even at that time.

All religious congregations in the country have similar connotations and potential in spreading the pandemic in the country, without doubt - be it Puram celebrations at Trichur or the Kumbh Mela Shahi snan in the holy river Ganges in Haridwar or Prayagraj. Political parties and religious groups in the country must understand the seriousness of the situation, not to play politics in this regard, ignoring and forgetting the main enemy to be Corona pandemic that the country and the rest of the world is facing with a great trepidation, and is at the wits end to find ways and means in coping the situation. This is applicable to political rallies, road shows and mass gatherings by political parties in poll bound states where the elections are in final phases.

Every citizen in the country is expected to play his/her role abiding by the norms initiated by health experts in controlling and tackling the spread of the virus. Justifications to escape from the dictated norms will not serve any purpose. Even the developed countries of Europe and the US are paying the price for being indifferent to this reality when the pandemic was in the early and incipient stage, last year that had taken a heavy toll on human life. Interestingly the ignorant and indifferent general public were clamouring against the closure of pubs and night entertainment spots. And the US had remained for a long time to be the fool's paradise of treating Covid-19 as any other cold and flu – curable by taking a paracetamol. And, interestingly in Pakistan and other Muslim dominated countries, the attitude against Covid-19 was even lukewarm; they had even attributed Covid to the 'Quran' justifying that people had no fear from it. It is important that all such silly and foolish notions must be abolished from peoples mind for the pandemic to be meaningfully controlled and eradicated.

K V Raghuram, Wayanad

Important milestone

Amid the gloom of second wave of Covid pandemic, an important milestone in space exploration and aviation went largely unnoticed (Apr 20: NASA chopper makes historic flight on Mars). The success of Ingenuity helicopter's short historic flight on Mars has to be one of the greatest achievement of space exploration by NASA ever since Voyager 1 and 2 launched 44 years back entered interstellar space. With more scheduled flights in coming weeks, we can get a good aerial glimpse of the Red Planet.

Sajid Farooq, Kurnool

Modi and Covid scare

This refers to "Scale-up Production" (THI 21 April). One hopes that PM's appeal would have the desired effect and enough vaccine stock would be made available to all the states matching with the size of the age group of the population who are now eligible for vaccination. The PM's appeal to people of every home, apartment and all others to promote covid appropriate behaviour within and outside should be taken seriously by all and do our best to spread this culture. While PM did share his sorrow for the loss of life, I was expecting PM would apologise on behalf of his party for not realising the gravity of the situation and going ahead with the election campaign in front of a huge crowd when he was himself asking people to stay away from large gathering.

It is a different matter, our leaders have not cultivated the habit of accepting the mistake leave alone apology and no wonder PM Modi has now sought the assistance of children (Bal Mitras) to motivate the elders to avoid going out and follow covid appropriate behaviour.

If PM Modi had sought the help of children before getting in campaign mode, probably his party and others would have been forced to opt for a virtual campaign instead of assembling people in large where there was no scope for any covid appropriate behaviour. What shame, we have come to a stage that instead of elders and leaders setting an example to follow discipline to children, we are depending on them.

S Natarajan, New Delhi