‘India turned Covid-19 crisis into opportunity’: PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday that India turned the coronavirus crisis into an opportunity.

“We did not manufacture personal protective equipment, made N-95 masks for namesake when the disease first broke out here. Today, we manufacture two lakh PPEs in a day and two lakh N-95 masks in a day. This is because we turned the challenge into an opportunity,” he said in his address to the nation.

He also said that it is the responsibility to every person of the country to make 21st century India’s century.

“There is only one way to do this - to become self reliant,” the Prime Minister said.

Further expanding on this, PM Modi said, “The definition of self reliance is changing in today’s world. Today, it is about self-centred approach rathern than people-centric approach. But this is not India’s philosophy. India’s culture is about becoming self-reliant whose soul is ‘World is one Family’.”

PM Modi held a meeting with the chief ministers on Monday where he said that states will have greater say in determining the extent of restrictions and relaxations after May 17.

He also emphasised that social distancing remains the “biggest weapon” against the virus till a vaccine is found, and suggested that the lockdown may not be lifted entirely.

In his fifth interaction with chief ministers on the pandemic, according to participants at the meeting, PM Modi said that India now had a good sense of the spread of the disease. He also urged states to carefully examine specific geographical areas to come up with a roadmap for the next phase of lockdown and highlighted the importance of green zones in restarting economic activity.