Towards the end of his daily press conference on COVID-19 updates, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan would list many names of those who contributed to the CM Disaster Relief Fund. It was from this list that we once heard the story of 70-year-old Lalithamma who stopped a police jeep to contribute her little savings to help the state. We also heard of Subaidha, who sold two of her goats to contribute to the CMDRF.
Stories of goodwill keep popping up, even from sources often brushed off as all talk and no action. Like social media groups. Progressive Minds, a Kerala-based public group on Facebook for cultural and political discussions of all sorts, contributed Rs 31,000 to the CMDRF, one rupee for every member the group has.
“Social media groups challenge each other to contribute at times like these. During the floods too, this happened. This time we decided to contribute a rupee for every member of the group and we have 31k members. It is however 15 to 20 members who made the contribution but others comment about making individual donations,” says Ashok, group admin.
Progressive Minds challenged a few other groups, some of whom took up the challenge and made their own contributions, Ashok says. These include meme groups like Cyber Troll and Troll Republic, and a film group called Movie Street. They in turn challenged other groups like The Music Circle and Royal Sports Arena. The chain went on, making a significant contribution to the CMDRF possible.
Delivering essentials in Malayinkeezhu
While financial contributions happen in different ways (the CMDRF has received Rs 190.75 crore in total), elsewhere people gather to help their immediate societies in ways they can. We have earlier written about auto rickshaw driver Ajayan who took it upon himself to deliver essentials to people in Kottayam. Something similar is happening in Malayinkeezhu panchayat in Thiruvananthapuram, where members of prominent science body Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad (KSSP) have formed a WhatsApp group to deliver essential commodities and books to people in the panchayat.
“We began the group on October 2 last year, with members of 100 families. The idea then was to create a market for products made by KSSP and Kudumbashree as well as vegetables farmed by some of the families. Every two Sundays, we ran the market for an hour at the Sree Krishna Vilasom Library to sell these commodities that can’t otherwise be sold. With the spread of the pandemic, we changed the nature of the group, to use it to take essential commodities, produced by the same families, to those who could not go out during the lockdown,” says Shibu, a KSSP member of Thiruvananthapuram district committee.
Malayinkeezhu was earlier marked as a hotspot of COVID-19.
Two KSSP members – unit secretary Harikrishnan and former unit secretary Pramod – do the delivery of these goods, free of charge. Every day, the items for sale would be displayed on the group, and those who need them will claim them, Shibu says.
“We also included books. I used to have a private book lending library. I took books out from there. The secretary of the Sree Krishna Vilasom Library also agreed to contribute books,” Shibu adds.
They are now including masks too, made by Kudumbashree members, but for this they are charging a service fee of Re 1 per mask.