New Delhi: At a time when the world is waging a grim and desperate battle against the novel coronavirus and more than a lakh people have died, India is also gearing up to face the contagion that has spread across the length and breadth of the country.
Yet there are three states in India where the infection has not spread to.
Not surprisingly, all these three states are in Northeast (NE) India. Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Sikkim have thankfully not reported a single case of COVID 19 till now even as India has at least 8,356 positive cases while at least 273 people have died.
Otherwise known to be a ‘tourists’ paradise’, what may have saved the NE region till now is the widespread disturbances and protests over the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) that became the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) after Parliament passed it on December 11, 2019.
The troubles led to many tourists putting off their travel plans in the NE while many states already had stringent inner-line permit (ILP) norms that were regaining focus because of the protests.
The protests against CAB started much earlier in January 2019. But they began in earnest in October 2019, which actually coincided with the tourist season for the region when tourists from the mainland, as well as foreigners, travel in.
The protests took a violent run after parliament passed the legislation and CAB became CAA. The new act fast-tracks Indian citizenship for non-Muslims who arrived in India from Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan on or before December 31, 2014.
Till Sunday, the NE states have reported a total of 35 COVID 19 positive cases.
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An overwhelming 30 of which have been linked to the 'Tableeghi Jamaat' religious gathering held at south Delhi’s Nizamuddin locality which has become the 'Ground Zero' of most COVID 19 transmissions in India.
Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram have reported a single case each, Manipur and Tripura two each, while only Assam has a slightly higher number of about 29 cases, of which, all but one were linked to the Nizamuddin gathering.
The only Arunachal Pradesh positive case has been traced to a person who had attended the ‘Tableeghi Jamaat’ congregation while the Mizoram case is that of a Christian pastor who had flown in from a foreign country.
The Manipur cases are those of a medical student who had flown in from the United Kingdom and that of a person traced to the Nizamuddin meet. The two Tripura cases are those of a woman with a history of foreign travel and a paramilitary trooper who had travelled from Madhya Pradesh.
While many theories are being advanced as to how and why the virus has not impacted the NE region much, some are fanciful too.
One that would surely cheer compulsive chewers of 'tamul' or 'quai' or 'kong kwai' is a hypothesis that says the blood-red chew comprising a combination of 'tamul' (areca nut) with ‘paan’ (betel leaf) with a generous rub of ‘soon’ (lime) is what kills omnipresent pathogens and bacteria inside the mouth.
An additional corollary that is gaining currency as a COVID 19 countermeasure is the sudden ‘heating’ up of the body that happens just after the ‘tamul’ chew which is being forwarded as invincibility against COVID 19.
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