The Prime Minister’s initiative is unique and reinforces the inherent advantages of a lockdown as an essay towards combating coronavirus, though certain segments do have an issue with the closure and the resultant economic dislocation. Mr Narendra Modi’s video conference on Monday with virtually every Indian envoy was intended to cover a wide field ~ and across the world ~ in terms of consultations aimed at seeking curative methods and streamlined systems.

Specifically, the Prime Minister is reported to have urged ambassadors and high commissioners to help leverage bilateral equations to procure equipment, technology and coordinate R & D operations to buttress India’s efforts to combat Covid.

Across the country, that is predominantly rural, the public health wherewithal doesn’t uniformly match the enormity of the crisis that has killed 35 people as on Wednesday morning. Just as no Prime Minister has ever presided over a nationwide lockdown, so too has no Head of Government in India taken envoys into confidence in the wake of a dreadful health emergency.

On both counts, therefore, Mr Modi’s initiatives have been nothing short of unique and are perfectly concordant with an international emergency. He has extended the loop of consultations beyond the country’s bureaucracy to its representatives in the far-flung capitals of the world. Which is perfectly logical not the least because coronavirus now plagues the world.

Pre-eminently, his interaction with the Indian ambassadors in China ~ where the virus germinated ~ the United States, South Korea and Italy ~ countries where the death toll and afflictions have surpassed that of China ~ must have been potentially constructive.

Whereas people of this country have been kept guessing over what transpired during the 75-minute interaction, the envoys are said to have shared the experiences of the countries where they serve and more basically represent India. Through the envoys, Mr Modi has let it be known that India had “reacted early to reduce the risk of importing the infection, and thereafter to prevent a large outbreak”.

The measures included the world’s largest quarantine and lockdown, indeed directives that have perhaps averted a graver catastrophe. The Prime Minister has come through as a leader who is prepared to draw lessons from the world over.

Hence the advice to “stay alert and identify in the countries of accreditation the best practices, innovations, scientific breakthroughs and sources to procure medical equipment for India’s fight against Covid-19”. There was also an economic underpinning to the interaction.

Mr Modi has asked the heads of missions to suitably publicise the newly created PM Cares Fund to mobilise donations from abroad.Both the appeal and the feedback are critical in the overall construct, most particularly Germany’s success in controlling the mortality rate. Or how South Korea has leveraged technology to keep track of the infected.

But this is India where the Covid-19 positive son of a bureaucrat mother and doctor father had a free run of a state government office. Demonetization of November 2016 was a picnic compared to Coronavirus of March 2020.