By Navneet Mishra

New Delhi, May 11 (IANS): Even as police are busy trying to strictly enforce the nationwide lockdown across urban areas in urban India, rural people are setting an example by not visiting each other nor organising social functions on the sly.

There is an undeclared curfew in villages. The Rural Development Ministry has already praised many villages in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka etc for setting an example in social distancing norm.

Dr Manoj Mishra, who is a mass communications expert who keeps an eye on the rural India, said that traditional craft and trades in villages are closed. People were not complaining, rather cooperating in the government endeavour to stem the coronavirus spread.

Dr Mishra, who is the head of Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Jaunpur-based Veer Bahadur Singh Purvanchal University, said that villages didn't feel the shortage of food since seasonal vegetables are in abundance and the rabi crop of wheat too has been harvested and stored.

He said that earlier the labourers used to charge money for their labour, but now get wheat from farmers. Also, the central and state governments have made arrangements for the poor in villages. That's why the migrant labour wants to return to their native villages and towns since they feel there is no shortage of food there.

Dr Mishra said that villagers consumed traditional meals instead of junk food preferred by urbanites. He said that even before Prime Minister Narendra Modi advised people to drink herbal decoctions to boost their immunity, rural people had already implemented it in their lives.

He said that people were so much cautious that they had voluntarily postponed marriages in different districts of Uttar Pradesh to after June 15 despite the fact that authorities have allowed solemnisation of weddings with 20 people in attendance.