Tuesday, 27 April 2021 | PNS | Dehradun
The marketplaces and eateries were packed all day on Monday, more than the usual days in view of the seven-day Covid curfew that started from the evening. Most of the people were either shopping or enjoying their favourite dishes in restaurants violating the basic Covid-19 norms like social distancing and wearing masks. Some places like the Dispensary Road saw major crowding and traffic jam not seen even on major festivals.
On asking the public about the reason for their visit to the market on this particular day, they said that they believe that this seven-day curfew might convert into complete lockdown after seven days and they wanted to at least go shopping and eat their favourite dishes. “We came to the market believing that not many people would arrive considering the curfew from Monday. We wanted to enjoy this last day as it is expected that the time duration of curfew would certainly increase. However, every clothing store and the restaurant were quite crowded. We waited for 40 minutes to eat Chinese food in a restaurant in Tehsil. Probably everybody felt the same,” said an undergraduate student, Ritika Sharma. A clothing store manager in Paltan Bazaar, Ramesh Chandra said that since the construction work under the smart city project started here, there was a considerable decline in the number of customers at his shop. However, his store did considerable business on Monday which was probably the best day for business this month, opined Chandra. On being asked about violation of Covid guidelines in such a crowd, he said, “We are obviously allowing customers only when they are wearing masks. However, we cannot control them outside our stores. You can see police personnel roaming in the market but they are not saying anything to anyone then why would people care about following the norms. The curfew is basically a lockdown for us and we just tried making a few bucks before shutting down our store.”
Talking about the comparatively less crowd in grocery stores on Monday, a grocery store employee in Hanuman Chowk, Ram Kumar said that since people are aware that grocery stores will remain open under the essential services even during the curfew or lockdown, they are not bothered about it. “We had about the same number of customers as the other days on Monday. We were actually expecting more like the last time when the administration announced weekend lockdown but there was not much hike in customers here than the usual days,” said Kumar. Taking about the crowd in marketplaces, the district magistrate Ashish Kumar Srivastava said that the administration had made it clear that every essential service will be provided to locals during the curfew. The locals would also have to make some sacrifice and contribution in order to restrict the spread of Covid-19 contagion by making this curfew worthy of everybody’s efforts, asserted Srivastava.
