It is one thing to put up temporary barricades at state borders to stop people from crossing over amid the coronavirus pandemic. It becomes a completely different story when states take a leaf from US President Donald Trump’s playbook and try to seal themselves off from their neighbours by building walls and digging trenches.
Officials in Tamil Nadu’s border district of Vellore surprised everyone recently by building two concrete walls overnight on roads near the Andhra border. Each wall stood three feet in width and five feet in height. Not only did this hinder traffic to Vellore, famous for its super-speciality medical services, it also blocked the movement of at least 10,000 litres of milk to AP. After the walls came up, dairy farmers in Vellore were forced to take a circuitous route.
