The Evening Wrap Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. We hope you are staying home and staying safe. Here are the big stories that you need to follow today. Stricter controls in T.N. On Day 31 of the nation-wide lockdown, Tamil Nadu announced a further tightening of controls in select towns and cities for a few days. Areas within Chennai, Madurai, Salem, Tiruppur, and Coimbatore Municipal Corporations will follow a complete lockdown from 6 am on April 26 to 9 pm on April 29, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami announced today. All other municipal corporations in the State will function under existing restrictions. The Chief Minister clarified that all essentials services would continue to operate, but sale of fruits and vegetables will only be allowed on mobile carts. No other shops are permitted to operate during these three days. Anyone found violating the rules during this period would have their vehicles seized and face stringent action, the CM said. Doubling rate The rate of doubling of COVID-19 cases in India has reduced because of the lockdown, said Niti Aayog member and head of a Central panel on the pandemic, according to the Chairman of Empowered Group Dr. V.K. Paul. The cases are now doubling in 10 days, compared to five days during the first week of lockdown, and three days before the lockdown was imposed. Until March 29, the doubling rate stayed at about five, but after April 6, it went down to 10 days. This is the effect of lockdown, Dr. Paul said, referring to a graph maintained by independent researchers. If the lockdown had not been implemented, the number of coronavirus cases would have soared to more than a lakh, instead of the current 23,000 cases, Dr. Paul added. Pointing out that the centrepiece of India’s strategy against COVID-19 was close surveillance, he said 9.45 lakh suspected cases were under watch and upon detection of symptoms, samples were being taken for testing. COVID watch: The Numbers The total number of COVID-19 cases in India crossed 24,000, of which nearly 18,000 are active cases. The death toll is more than 760. More than 5,000 people have recovered. Self-reliance is the key: PM Today being Panchayati Raj Day, the spotlight shifted to rural India’s stand against COVID-19 as Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed sarpanches across the country via video conference. He announced the launch of two programmes: e-GramSwaraj, for monitoring of rural infrastructure works and e-governance; and Swamitva programme, which involves mapping of rural housing and land holdings using advanced technology such as drones. The Swamitva programme, Modi said, would help rural India leverage property assets for institutional credit. The PM also said that the biggest takeaway for India from the COVOD-10 crisis was the importance of self-reliance. “This self-reliance should be at the village, district, state, and national level. We should not look to other countries to satisfy our needs,” he said. He also lauded panchayats and villages across India for successfully implementing lockdown rules and social distancing norms. Poor need more Nobel Prize-winning economist Abhijit Banerjee said in an interview to the BBC that India has not “done anything close to enough” to support its poor during the COVID-19 pandemic. He added that the pandemic was a “double whammy”, as it made the poor lose their earning capacity just when the economy was facing a demand slump. His remarks concern the Centre’s welfare package of around ₹1.7 lakh crore – equivalent to 0.8% of GDP – to provide extra food grain and cash support to vulnerable sections of the population. Relief packages rolled out by other countries such as the U.S., Canada, Spain and Germany amount to a much higher percentage of their GDP. Banerjee suggested that India should print money to fund the expansion of the relief package so that people have cash to spend when the supply of goods and services return to a semblance of normalcy. While a fear of inflation might be holding the government back, this was the best way to bridge the income gap, he said. Ensuring the poor have adequate cash would lift the “mood for demand” after the lockdown ends, added the economist, known for his advocacy of universal basic income. In Brief: At a media briefing, President Donald Trump suggested that sunlight and household disinfectants can help defeat the coronavirus. He indicated he was pushing for research exploring these as potential remedies. “Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous – whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light…And supposing you brought the light inside the body, either through the skin or some other way,” he said. “And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute – one minute – and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning?” Have a safe weekend. Evening Wrap will be back on Monday. | 
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