MPS, experts join forces to form Covid-19 action group
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The vision is to bring together think tanks, policy experts with parliamentarians to conceptualise innovative solutions...
ANIL ANTONY, Congress leader
nNEW DELHI : A device as rudimentary as a thermometer got Samajwadi Party (SP) spokesperson Ghanshyam Tiwari thinking about a group, which could come up with innovative solutions to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak.
“Our thermometers are primarily contact heavy,” Tiwari, the national coordinator of the initiative, explained. “We need contactless thermal sensors that can collate data, as Covid-19 spreads through contact. This can come in handy for front line workers combating the pandemic. We can put out the data online and create a thermal map,” he said.
Tiwari and the Congress’s Anil K Antony thought it would be a good idea to create a national Covid-19 Action Group with people cutting across party lines members of Parliament (MP), public policy organisations and health experts. The group has been named Parliamentarians with Innovators for India (PII), whose primary task is to ensure that the solutions reach the masses.
“The vision is to bring together think tanks, policy experts with parliamentarians to conceptualise innovative solutions in the fight against Covid-19,” Anil Antony, co-ordinator, south and west, for the initiative said. “The focus is technological solutions such as low-cost medical solutions like ventilators and testing kits. We have even reached out to some premier venture capitalists in case funding is needed for any of these projects.”
BJP’S Rajat Sethi is the co-ordinator for the north and east.
The coordinators reached out to several parliamentarians including the Shiv Sena’s Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi. “The idea is to put together a group of people from different political ideologies and rise above our political differences to fight this pandemic together,” Chaturvedi said.
The fledgling group consists of 14 MPS including Chaturvedi: National People’s Party’s (NPP) Agatha Sangma, BJP’S GVL Narsimha Rao, Jamyang Tshering Namgyal, Varun Gandhi and Sudhanshu Trivedi , Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s Kalanidhi Veerasamy, the Congress’ Karti Chidambaram, Manish
Tewari and Rajeev Gowda , Bahujan Samaj Party’s Kunwar Danish Ali, YSR Congress Party’s Lavu Krishna, Trinamool Congress’s Mahua Moitra and Biju Janata Dal’s Sujeet Kumar.
The group has also partnered with the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore, Confederation of Indian Industry, Delhi, and the Population Foundation of India.
Health experts such as Meenakshi Datta Ghosh, former special secretary, Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare; Dr Arnab Mukherjee of Iim-bangalore and Dr. Amir Ullah Khan, advisor, Indian School of Business (ISB), are a part of the novel initiative.
The group has invited suggestions from the public on its website (piiindia.org) and will meet once a week from April 15.
“We’ll need protocols and suggestions as to how to tackle many other possible problems such as traveling in public transport after the ongoing 21-day nationwide lockdown is lifted,” Tiwari said. “We need to start thinking about the next step right now.”
The group is also planning to collate videos in several languages to offer healthcare professionals tutorials on the pandemic.
“This will be a knowledgesharing platform that has a wide scope,” said Congress MP Rajeev Gowda.