Amid red alert, Assam hunkers down for a spring without Bihu

As a transit for other north-eastern states, and with 1.5-2 million of its people working across the country, Assam was worried about covid-19 from the very beginning.

Thus, the state had not only started preparing for the worst by setting up exclusive hospitals and quarantine facilities, but had also imposed a total lockdown at least six hours before prime minister Narendra Modi had called for a 21-day nationwide lockdown.

The identification of a US tourist in Bhutan as a covid-19 positive case added to the early worry, since he had visited many places in Assam.

Despite the lockdown and the early preparation, the inevitable happened. As soon as the Centre alerted state health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma about 550 persons from Assam who might have attended a large religious congregation in Delhi’s Nizamuddin area organized by the Tablighi Jamaat, a red alert was sounded.

With suspected cases now spread across almost all its 33 districts, all available networks like the police, panchayats, Village Defence Parties and ASHA workers have been activated to trace those who had attended the event in Delhi.

The authorities tracked down over 350 returnees in less than 50 hours, but by then, the total number of positive cases had risen to 26, of which all but one had been to the Delhi event.

On Sunday, Sarma visited the Lakhtokia Masjid in Guwahati, which also houses the state’s Tablighi Jamaat office, to request them to share the definitive list of all those who attended the event in Delhi.

In normal times, with the start of spring, Assam would have been abuzz with preparations for the Rongali Bihu, the New Year festival.

Lakhs of Assamese working in different states have returned. Had the virus outbreak been delayed by a couple of weeks, things would have been worse.

“This will be the first time the Assamese will not be celebrating Bihu,” said academic and writer Sunil Pawan Baruah. “Such a thing had not happened even during World War II when Assam was a major part of the Indo-Burma theatre,” he added.

Samudra Gupta Kashyap is a freelance journalist based in Guwahati.