作者： bharat.cn

Top Indian government officials have reviewed safeguards already in place and potential crisis response measures, in case the rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak, which has already killed 56 in China, spills across the border.
On Saturday, Health Ministry officials briefed top cabinet members, including the home, foreign, defense and civil aviation secretaries, about the screening and other preventative measures being undertaken as more countries report 2019-nCoV infections.
While nobody in India has tested positive for the new coronavirus yet, authorities routinely take samples from all travelers who show any respiratory disease symptoms. Over 20,000 passengers on 115 flights at seven international airports across India have been screened in recent days.
In addition to thermal scanners set up earlier, several multidisciplinary teams comprising public health experts, clinicians and microbiologists were sent to airports in New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kochi on Sunday. According to Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, screening measures have also been increased at the border with Nepal, which reported the first coronavirus case on Friday.

The Health Ministry also issued a fresh advisory for travelers going to or returning from China, urging them to avoid close contacts and promptly seek medical attention, and report to the Indian Embassy, if they feel sick and have symptoms like fever and cough.

Internet services will be partly restored in Indian Kashmir from Saturday, ending a five-and-a half-month government-imposed blackout in the troubled region, but social media will stay offline, local authorities said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government imposed a communications blackout in early August when it stripped the portion of Kashmir it controls – the country’s only Muslim-majority region – of its partial autonomy.

India also imposed a curfew, sent in tens of thousands of extra troops and detained dozens of Kashmiri political leaders and others, many of whom remain in detention, drawing criticism abroad.

Internet access will be restored later Saturday but only to 301 government-approved websites that include international news publications and platforms such as Netflix and Amazon.

Through some of the coldest nights in a century, the students of New Delhi gathered outside the city’s police headquarters. They chanted anti-government slogans, recited Pakistani resistance poets, and flashed witty posters to make a stand against a new citizenship law that excludes Muslims.

As the confrontations continue across the country, though, they’ve morphed into a wider protest against economic prospects and financial disparities. Violence flared at campuses as the authorities cracked down on the demonstrations that have become Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s biggest test since he won power more than five years ago.

“Their handling of the economy is disastrous,” said Akshay Bajaj, 29, a post-doctoral student who helped organize protests at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. “There are no jobs, falling growth and rocketing prices for vegetables.”

The protests were triggered by a new law called the Citizenship Amendment Act that fast-tracks religious minorities from three neighboring countries, except for Muslims. They intensified after police stormed the Jamia Millia Islamia university in December to crush what it said were acts of vandalism.

In solidarity, students spilled out of colleges across the capital and even elite management and technology schools to protest against Modi and his confidante Amit Shah, India’s powerful minister for internal security.

“Nationalism, far from being reversed, made further headway,” billionaire philanthropist George Soros told the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, according to excerpts from his speech. The biggest and “most frightening setback,” he said, was in India.

Protesters say the law undermines India’s Constitution, which treats all religions equally. They fear it will be misused, together with a proposed National Citizens’ Register, to disenfranchise poor Muslims who lack the documents to prove their residency. The government instead should have expended its energy on reversing the worst economic slump in a decade and the highest unemployment rate in 45 years.

“The government doesn’t attempt to answer the grievances of the people, it is instead distracting us with these kind of issues,” said Mihir Jain, 26, a chartered accountant who last month participated in his first ever public protest. “If today we allow them to go ahead with this, we don’t know what will come next.”

Peaceful protests continued last week, with at least two dozen rallies and sit-ins in Mumbai and New Delhi and several others scattered across the country. The Supreme Court on Wednesday deferred a hearing on cases challenging the constitutional validity of the citizenship law. A human chain is planned for Jan. 30, the anniversary of the slaying of Mahatma Gandhi by a Hindu fundamentalist, according to messages being shared on college WhatsApp groups.