Sarika Jain, Deputy Income Tax Commissioner, Mumbai, decided it was not enough to sit at home idle and watch the ‘disturbing’ COVID-19 situation unfold on her television screen. The differently-abled Indian Revenue Service officer, who secured an All India Rank of 527 in her civil services examination in 2013, has always taken up challenges in the face of adversity.
Observing the vulnerability of sanitation workers, drivers, security guards outside her home at Bandra, she decided to stitch face masks for those who did not have any protective gear.
“By the time lockdown was announced, these people on the streets were left most vulnerable to the virus,” she said. The masks would be basic in nature, “but I could not have made clinical masks, nor was I going to sit and do nothing about it.”
On a recent evening, as she was going home from work at the Income Tax Department, Bandra, she had a feeling the country was ‘soon going to face something unprecedented.’ “The buses and roads were getting emptier, with fewer people stepping out. I just did not want to sit at home doing nothing about it,” said Ms. Jain, who hails from Kantabanji town in Odisha’s Bolangir district, but has been posted in the financial capital for some years.
The day Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged citizens to stand on their balconies to clap and bang plates to appreciate the work of those at the forefront of the COVID-19 battle, Ms. Jain got to work: she bought herself a sewing machine and cloth worth ₹10,000.
What helped her devote time to the effort was the Central government’s decision to extend the date for time-barring cases under the Income Tax Act, allowing people in the department like her to come up with ways to help the disadvantaged during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Ms. Jain started putting in five hours a day, stitching 50 masks or 10 every hour. Some days she would even do 100 with a little help from her mother-in-law.
Once complete, a family member goes around in the locality distributing the masks, which has helped hundreds so far with basic protection against the virus. “It is a lot of labour for her to put the masks together since stitching each takes a lot of time. But she has always been a fighter,” said her husband Virag Shah, an accountant.
Ms. Jain said she has so far distributed nearly 500 masks and hopes to continue till the raw material lasts. “I know what I am doing is not enough in the larger scheme of things, but I am not one of those persons who would sit at home and do nothing. This is my message to citizens: they should each contribute in their own way without breaking the lockdown protocols.”
Published - March 31, 2020 12:25 am IST
