Eid relief package.

Byline: Asha'ar Rehman

THE moment of debate on whether or not we should have a lockdown has long passed. A decision was taken that we are not going to have a lockdown - at least not in the classic sense. There's little point in arguing with the bosses over this now. A more realistic approach would be to try and concentrate your attention, post-decision, on more relevant matters. For example, how officials have gone about implementing the rules of this relaxed lockdown that they have introduced the country to, and what new special dimensions Covid-19 might lend to the coming Eid.

It is quite perplexing how the order for relaxation of whatever regime we had there in the name of lockdown has been quickly followed by wise counsel in the old mould as we are used to receiving from the elderly. Or it's more like the sermon of the religious leader who is moved enough by the utter materialism around him to sermonise and warn his wayward masses against worldly temptations.

The path of law is easily swapped here for the moral one even when everyone knows who has been most instrumental in getting the people their freedoms to shop till they drop - hopefully from exhaustion. A friend likely to not lose his voice in a most adversarial din insists that it is not the workers who have forced this relaxation in the lockdown.

The holiday season this time is governed by some grim realities that are not easy to ignore.

As I try to counter him, my friend leaves me with his questions - nay interrogation. I have seen no workers' rallies calling for an end to the lockdown, except for the ever-running pro-labour demo held by the prime minister each evening ever since the onset of the coronavirus. This friend of mine is stating what is obvious when he says it's the tajir biradari or the traders or businessmen who have led to this sudden opening of the floodgates of the market days before Eid.

The cleric has little chance with these merrymakers at the end of the holy month of abstinence. So too the official orders that seek to bind various professionals to a code in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Those trying to control the great collections of people at the market appeared to offer the most hilarious in this series of government directives until the officials minding the public transport came into action.

There's been a steady stream of them, which shows that the officials take those running various private transport options either as saints out on a mission to...

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