A survey with more than 18,000 responses from citizens residing in 30 districts of Maharashtra shows that the majority are in favour of continuing lockdown restrictions, but with permission for home deliveries to minimise consumer inconvenience and business disruption, not only of essentials but of other goods as well.
The restrictions are set to end May 14 mid-night and the government is likely to announce a new set. The survey was conducted online by LocalCircles, one of the leading community social media platforms that enables citizens and small businesses to escalate issues for policy and enforcement interventions and enables the government to make policies that are citizen and small business centric.
To understand the pulse of the residents of Maharashtra about the best approach for containment and restarting economic activity, the survey has been presented to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Chief Secretary Sitaram Kunte. It emphasised on a mechanism where stores are permitted to operate in home delivery mode with no customer walk-ins allowed and orders only placed via phone, WhatsApp or websites.
As per the survey, an overwhelming 84% favoured continuing with the restrictions, with 43% saying, “permit all stores/business to open for home deliveries only and continue lockdown till May 31” and 41% saying “continue with existing lockdown/restriction till May 31”.
The survey asked residents about the kind of services they think that should be permitted. While 40% said “home delivery of items like grocery & medicines”, 31% said “home delivery of all goods”. Breaking down the poll, 28% said “physical retail stores opened in shifts to provide for in-person shopping”, while 1% couldn’t say.
With new variants of the virus being found each month, many people are realising that they might be spending considerable time at home in 2021, perhaps more than 2020, and are keen to get set up properly. In the question on the must-have products for their household in the next three months, 60% said equipment such as laptop and mobile phone or related items for work from home or other activities.
