Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man

PRATYAYA AMRIT, 52 PRINCIPAL SECRETARY, DISASTER MANAGEMENT, Bihar. COVID DEED In charge of the state’s response to the reverse migration, he leads the mammoth exercise of quarantining perhaps 800,000 people

- Amitabh Srivastava

In the last week of March, as the national lockdown began, about 175,000 migrant workers arrived in Bihar’s border districts, demanding to be allowed to return to their homes. Before their arrival, the state government had wanted them to remain where they were. What was now required was an effective quarantine, a task that fell to Bihar’s principal secretary of disaster management, Pratyaya Amrit. He had already been busy, setting up screening camps and requisitioning schools and panchayat bhavans for use as quarantine centres. Food, supplies, medical staff, and cooks had to be arranged, as well as busses to take migrants from Bihar’s borders to quarantine camps in their districts. Fifteen days later, when people started leaving the camps, not a single one showed symptoms of the virus.