“I don’t want people to say ‘Oh, environmentalists are celebrating this lockdown.’ We are not. This is not the solution. But whatever the new normal is post-Covid-19, we have to make sure we take this breath of fresh air and think about the serious efforts we need to deal with pollution in Delhi.” Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and Environment, on nature reclaiming itself during the lockdown ( The Guardian, April 11) “The world has been put in a Great Lockdown. The magnitude and speed of collapse in activity that has followed is unlike anything experienced in our lifetimes.” Gita Gopinath, chief economist, international Monetary Fund on the economic crisis triggered by the covid-19 epidemic ( The New York Times, April 14) “Compassion might be about looking at people’s hearts. Real solidarity is about following where the money and power flows. The migrant labour and the unemployed, whose quiescence we seem to take too much for granted, will be demanding their rights; not our mercy.” Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former vice chancellor of Ashoka University, on the migrant labour crisis (Indian Express, April 18) “To my mind, the Modi government’s redesign of New Delhi brings to mind not so much living Communist autocrats as it does some dead African despots. It is the sort of vanity project, designed to perpetuate the ruler’s immortality, that Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast and Jean Bédel-Bokassa of the Central African Republic once inflicted on their own countries.” Ramchandra Guha, historian-author, on the proposed central Vista redesign project (TheWire.in, April 19) “The lockdown has come as a blessing in disguise for universities in India. The fear of poor quality of online teaching and teachers’ hesitation to use online portals has now completely disappeared.” P.B. Sharma, vice chancellor of Amity University, Gurgaon, on the switch to online education (Hindu BusinessLine, April 24)
