Trainee IRTS officers draw draft for phase-wise exit from lockdown

Three days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked state authorities to come up with strategies for exit from Covid-19 lockdown, three trainee Indian Railway Traffic Service (IRTS) officers have drafted a plan categorising regions based on the severity of the outbreak and after analysing various parameters, including the number of active cases in the past days and spread of the virus.

The draft plan was officially sent to the Niti Aayog by the Lucknow-based centre for disaster management and training of the Indian Railway Institute of Transport Management (IRITM). However, the same draft was informally shared with Rajiv Kumar, vice-chairman of Niti Aayog a day earlier by veteran IRTS officer K L Thapar, who runs the Delhi-base Asian Institute of Transport Development.

Officials said the policy-making body is likely to give the go-ahead for most of the measures suggested by the trainees — Sagar Chahar (29), S Rishi Raghav (26) and Neha Desai (25).

The 86-year-old Mr Thapar said, “Niti Aayog VC Rajiv Kumar draws on home grown talent and research, and I took the opportunity to share with him the exit draft for Covid19 lockdown prepared by the newly recruited IRTS officers. The draft is robust and analyses different possible scenario. The multi-disciplinary knowledge of the three trainee officers reflects in the comprehensive draft.”

The draft says elderly people should be confined to their homes and inter-state travel should be restricted. It suggests that districts with most positive cases should be isolated completely. While the proposal suggests that factories can be opened in unaffected areas, it comes with a caveat: “No inter-state movement of labourers should be allowed to facilitate the functioning of these establishments.”

The movement of people will be strictly controlled in the worst-hit states and districts, while people in the stage 0 and stage 1 areas will have more freedom of movement, he said.

Sagar Chahar, a 2017 batch IRTS officer with MBBS degree and master’s in public policy from the National Law School, Bengaluru, said, “We three worked for two straight days and used are experience and academic expertise to formulate the draft. We have taken care of even the worst case scenario in the exit strategy.”

Currently under training at the zonal centre, Udaipur, the trio had sent the draft in to their superiors and also shared it on the railway WhatsApp group for peer-to-peer critical analysis and further amendment.

Ajay Pratap Singh, director of IRITM Lucknow, said, “The draft classifies the states in four categories (extreme, high, moderate and low vulnerable) and suggests category-wise approach of staggered exit from the lockdown. It also gives specific guidelines for important sectors such as transportation and agriculture.”

“We hope that most part of the draft would be inculcated by Niti Aayog in its exit plan,” A. P. Singh added.

According to the railways, apart from Sagar Chahar, the other two IRTS trainee officers — S Rishi Raghav and Neha Desai — are 2018 batch officers. Rishi is a BTech graduate and have a masters degree in city and regional planning from a Atlanta (USA)-based university, while Neha is a graduate in LLB and MA in literature.

Courtesy: TOI