Positivity, healthcare and responsibility of the citizenry!

A modern civilised nation is governed by rule of law and is held together as a society by cultural imperatives, codes of collective morals and ethics. It relies on shared history and common future aspirations to keep the nation together, united as one force. A large enough group of people can’t remain united without any of these in place. Time and again though when one of these forces begin to grow weak under the influence of temporary developments, the ruling class throws into the mix a ‘common enemy’ to galvanise the masses with the goal to dissolve differences thereby gaining the lost grounds of cohesion. Nature has done its part this time around in uniting the whole of humanity by allowing the virus to have a ball. Yes, to put things on record, I do not buy into the conspiracy theories that point to COVID-19 being a Chinese laboratory mishap. To my mind science of the day is not that evolved, and in my assessment it can’t accomplish something of this proportion, just yet. Nations, rich and poor, have proved to be inadequate, across the globe in the face of the challenge that the virus has posed. The US languished in the 1st wave but made a decisive recovery by being thoughtful with its vaccine strategy. The UK did not fair well too in the first wave but made wise corrections from the 2nd onset and followed it up intelligently with an effective vaccination drive. Tales of the rest of western Europe are also more or less the same; fell first and then gathered themselves up.

This however can’t be said about Indian management of the crisis, we stand apart - truly in a league of our own. Unlike any other sizable sovereign on the planet that first goofed up and then corrected itself by imposing restrictions to break the chain of transmission followed in quick succession by inclusive vaccination program; we managed the first wave relatively well and then messed up completely in the 2nd wave and we did not stop there we also gave the game away by completely throwing the vaccination strategy in the bin. We have earned the dubious distinction of having the most unscientific response to the virus imaginable. Helpless poor Indians dying by the thousands as a result of acute shortages of everything necessary from oxygen, to hospital beds to medicines to doctors to nurses and even ambulances, stand testimony to the failure of the current regime. Ugly misery has spread itself visibly on the roads and the streets of the nation so starkly that it has overwhelmed the strong hold that the Government has on the media and as a result of which it is finding it impossible to keep the damage under the covers, hidden from the scrutinizing gaze of the world. Social media carried the painful cries of the Indian people to all parts of the world connected with the internet. Monumental mismanagement could no longer be hidden. Taking a clue from it the Government has quite cleverly come up with ‘positivity spin’ to harvest favorable coverage for itself and to take the attention away from its own failings. 

In the first half of this article let me present to you three such events, which are utterly disconsolate, but have been presented to the nation as courageous, smart, considerate and inventive moves by the citizens - the ‘positive spin’, as it were, has been given to the negative news. 

Social media preceded the coverage of reputed newspapers and subsequently the ‘event’ was also given space in the new-age internet media; images of Indians quarantining on trees! We learn about history from the text as well as images, later being more profound. Billions of pictures are taken every day, especially in our time and age, cameras embedded in ubiquitous mobile phones have made capturing moments easier than ever before. When history of this time is written, it will be impossible for histographers to not include these images which speak of our poverty, the pervertedness of the ‘system’ and the collective helplessness of the society, both loudly and clearly in equal measures. These pictures are an antidote to the product of the well-oiled propaganda machinery of the rulers of the day. When I say these things, I am mindful of the fact that every story, every narrative, every detail; in an argumentative society has many layers. Nuance is not always welcome and superficialities sometimes do outrun deeper truth. And perhaps, when current affairs are filtered in the funnel of time, the dust and impurities of passion, pomp and show, I hope, will get eliminated and what will come out will be an unadulterated, accurate and unemotional representation of facts, the truth of our times.

This is why it has been said that journalistic reports and commentary on events of the time are the first draft of history. I wish therefore to accommodate the ‘positive’ version that has come out too, in which people praised the ingenuity of these villagers who not only took the threat from Covid19 seriously but also took effective steps, at the cost of their convenience and despite the lack of means, needed to safeguard their near and dear ones from the deadly pathogen. I have provided here a link to just one such news report from the source that I trust for my information. It must however be said that it is not the only source, this story has been covered extensively. 

Hindu Coverage: Coronavirus | Migrant labourer completes quarantine on a tree 

I see the ‘positive praises’ in the same light as I received the ‘pleasant’ weather reports in the national capital region of India this week, knowing fully well that it is at the cost of severe devastation and deaths caused by the cyclone Tauktae on the western coast of the country. We enjoyed cool afternoons, our air conditioning devices could catch some rest only because at another place, thousands of KMs away from our residences, some of our own people were suffering. While they were waiting for help to arrive both nervous and anxious in equal measures, some of us in the north wanted this weather to extend as much as possible.

I have to confess that the cool breeze that soothed me on the exteriors caused me pain on the inside, just as much as, reading lauds for the individuals on the treetop, made my heart sink.

Let’s analyse yet another instance of the state failing miserably in its primary function of saving the lives of its citizens. Last month, a report made many of us gloat, over 85 years old, now late Narayanrao Dabhadkar, giving up his bed to save the life of a young man.

Indian Express report: Viral claim about 85-year-old RSS worker giving up his bed for younger man runs into questions.

The brave selfless soul died three days after his discharge. The country, in one voice, praised him. Enthusiasts among the supporters of the current regime also dug out his connection with RSS to incinuate that, that is exactly how all men of the self-proclaimed nationalistic Hindu organisation the RSS, are ‘selfless’ and ‘righteous’. Thankfully, we know to ignore these baseless collective claims with ease. The tragedy has been given a massive ‘positive spin’ but is it not impossible to overlook how the state failed in providing an old man with a bed and other necessary medical treatment as a result of which he died. What we collectively and blithely ignore in this ‘positive spin’ is the fact that ‘right to live’ is not an either-or proposition but something that is applicable to all Indian citizens under our constitution. The old man deserved to live no less than the middle-aged patient for whom he sacrificed his life. 

I bow in respect of the supreme sacrifice but at the same time, I also feel ashamed for being part of a country that can’t save its citizens from an illness that has been known for over a year.

The propaganda of positivity is not only restricted to colouring the news reports with rosy tint but it also has been deployed with the sinister intention of concealing facts that reveal the poor delivery of the union government. There is no way for us to know precisely of all declared and accepted Covid deaths by the Government, how many could have been saved if they got timely and able medical assistance? Some experts believe that a little over half of those who perished prematurely could have survived, though with diminished quality of life, if they got what their medical condition commanded. Whose responsibility was it to ensure that everything needed was provided for? It is that of the elected union Government, when I say this I am mindful of the fact that ‘health’ is a state subject. Let us not forget though that the epidemic act of 2005 that the union government invoked last year is still in force. And therefore, I say, this pandemic is totally and completely the responsibility of the Modi government.

We know that not only have they failed spectacularly in doing what was required of them but they have also brazenly abandoned responsibility and made a concerted attempt to push blame of the failure over to the states. Indian states have neither the expertise nor the financial resources to deal with the calamity of this pandemic and yet, they are having to muscle it all by themselves. Image conscious PM has held multiple meetings with the district magistrates in which he gave no ‘objective’ detail, and got away instead with generic ‘feel good’ comments. As the meeting ended a bunch of photographs and video clips were released to the public and the media, who in turn plastered them everywhere to create an impression that PM Modi is hard at work. The ‘positive spin’ you see.

The truth however could not be any further from the claims. Very simply if he worked, so many would not have died in such precarious circumstances.

Let’s now turn to the state of healthcare in our country.

The subject requires a much deeper dialogue, discussion and debate. Decades of studied underinvestment has impoverished the infrastructure immensely. To give you a sense, I quote from a WHO study.

Quote 1

“World Bank data (https://bit.ly/3u4cHfg) reveal that India had 85.7 physicians per 1,00,000 people in 2017 (in contrast to 98 in Pakistan, 58 in Bangladesh, 100 in Sri Lanka and 241 in Japan), 53 beds per 1,00,000 people (in contrast to 63 in Pakistan, 79.5 in Bangladesh, 415 in Sri Lanka and 1,298 in Japan), and 172.7 nurses and midwives per 1,00,000 people (in contrast to 220 in Sri Lanka, 40 in Bangladesh, 70 in Pakistan, and 1,220 in Japan).”

Quote 2

“Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA), Ashoka University, shows that this has been stagnant for years: 1% of GDP 2013-14 and 1.28% in 2017-18 (including expenditure by the Centre, all States and Union Territories) (https://bit.ly/3bw3O7Y). Health is a state subject in India and State spending constitutes 68.6% of all the government health expenditure”

** Note that both of these quotes are from the editorial published in The Hindu, dated 21st May 2021.

It should also be acknowledged that additional healthcare capacity can’t be augmented in the short term. You can erect buildings, buy equipment, procure most advanced medicines but healthcare professionals who can use the infra to cure people, take time, a lot of time to come by. Medicine is a highly specialised field. To give you a sense, if we decide to improve the ratio of doctors per 1000 Indians today, the impact of it will only be seen in 10 years, that is how long it will take. But as you know elections happen every 5 year and electorates do not necessarily punish the politician for what is ‘not there’, the social awareness around these aspects are yet not developed among the masses.

A country that has wilfully not chosen to spend on healthcare for decades together can’t expect its infrastructure to have the capability to see the surge of a kind that we witnessed and to some extent are still witnessing in the 2nd Covid wave through, without widespread apocalyptic damage, death and destruction. So, as much as we would like to not believe; these deaths are a result of deficiencies that are not only systemic and structural but also deeply rooted in the thinking of the policymaker. Our problems are as old as the Indian democracy itself. We would have absolved the Narendra Modi government of what clearly is an unpardonable sin of mis-governance easily, if he elected to make any headway in the right direction in the course of the last year. Sadly every piece of evidence points to the contrary. He collected massive sums of money in his private fund named ‘PM CARE FUND’, a fat sum of 30K Cr. has been put aside in the union budget for vaccine-related expenditure and yet, he did not order vaccines in time. Even now, the states have been left to fend for themselves. PM CARE FUND is as opaque as opaque can be, significant efforts have been made by the PMO to hide it from the gaze of RTIs.

The misfortune of the Indian people is that the executive head of its republic is a man who cares about elections and elections alone. It should not be forgotten that he organised “Namaste Trump” in Gujarat, right at the beginning of the 1st wave of Covid, last year. He went ahead with it, despite India having discovered the first lot of patients suffering from the virus. Not just that, he waited for the Congress-led MP Govt to fall and Shivraj Singh Chouhan from his party BJP, to regain power, before declaring the 1st lockdown. Right in the middle of the 2nd wave he himself, his entire cabinet and party leadership were busy gathering huge crowds in all 5 states elections. Mercifully voters did not choose him in WB, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. He did however manage to keep power in Assam and win the UT of Puducherry for this party. 

In the last two essays :

#1 Indian an evaporating state: https://www.lavkush.co.in/2021/05/india-evaporating-state.html 

#2 India floating lifeless : https://www.lavkush.co.in/2021/05/india-floating-lifeless.html

We’ve dissected the cause of the failures, some of its seen and many of its unseen effects, in the rest of this write up let’s turn our focus to what changes should be made in the state of healthcare so as to ensure that, the next pandemic does not inflict upon us the same degree of devastation as this one lamentably has.

In a democracy, everything is an outcome of politics; from administration to economy to healthcare. Politicians, by way of policies and allocations, try to answer the questions that people ask of them. In the name of carrying out the will of the people, they fulfil their ideological commitments to their political parties. The debate on which set of ideologies is better than the other is an endless one and we should not get into it. Instead, our focus should be on making the things that matter important to the politicians. The core issue is that we vote on ‘vague’ promises. ‘Development, Employment, National security are agendas on which we the voters have been surrendering our fates to. We do not ever ask, how? Where will the money come from? Who is going to be a part of the executive team? How will the manifesto become a reality? The action plan, as it were.

India needs to take a clue from the United States of America - the way it has secured its institutions. It was the institutional integrity of the US that brought an end to the mistake that the voters made in choosing Trump. In India, we the citizens, instead of holding the elected representative to account we work hard to opt-out of the government. We send our children to private schools. When unwell, we seek the care of private hospitals. People with substantial wealth trust private security agencies to keep them safe. Our demand from the Government has still not matured beyond clean pothole free roads and bridges. We do not ask for universities and quality academic institutions. We do not fight for their research freedom, instead, we frown upon them.

The direct tax-paying vocal middle class in this country chooses to ignore that poignant state of the healthcare facilities. There is a strange acceptance of government-run facilities to be poor in cleanliness and deliveries. So much so that, when we see things not moving fast enough, we often remark, “Why is this moving at the speed of Government”. We have normalised under performance. Tied in unavailing and outdated concepts like religion, region and caste; we do not unite our voices on basic questions of healthcare, education, safety, financial wellbeing, improvement in the standard of living - we just do not. Election after election, we just vote someone, without ever assessing their objective performance.

When something grave and dramatic befalls us; we shut down our tribalistic instincts  for a while and then go back to nourishing our caste, religious and region biases over again. Politicians exploit this weakness to legitimise substandard results. Collective ignorance causes deaths as we have witnesses up and close in the last 18 months.

The other problem is that of data, we just do not know. Governments collect data selectively, they decidedly paint a picture that makes them look pretty, irrespective of the situation on the ground. Did the health minister not proclaim that Covid is in its endgame here in India, in the 2nd week of March this year? Have elected chief ministers not gone on record saying things are all right in their state? Have they not strenuously denied shortages of Oxygen, beds and medicines in their states? All of this when the truth is unravelling right in front of our eyes? Imagine how truthful and forthright they must be on items that we do not have intimate knowledge of?

What gives the politicians the courage to bullshit their way out of a difficult situation? The answer lies in the fact that ordinary Indians do not look for data and objective evidence to validate the claims that are made by their leaders. It won’t be a stretch to say that they trust what they hear from those in positions of power. Call it our collective naivety, innocence or plain stupidity. That is what it is. Politicians won’t work on things unless we make them work on them. We will need to come to the position from which we can set the agenda of the day, and not be blindly led by the whims and fancies of those in electoral politics. We will need to stop voting for a symbol unrestrainedly and start scrutinising the qualities of the candidate, their past, their ability and their plans not just their plain promises before we cast our ballot in their favour. 

To make healthcare the priority of the politicians we will need to ask and seek data/information on these questions.

 

1. How aware are we of the major health crisis of the city or the area that we live in?

2. Do we value the glitz of the property more than the actual treatment that is being rendered?

3. How easily and frequently we self medicate? 

4. Do we let quacks decide the course of our treatment?

5. Do we try to find out the scientific basis of the various forms of advertisement and endorsement that we are subjected to?

6. How much do we spend on the prevention of a condition?

7. How strongly do we demand laws to crush the nexus between the medical establishment and pharmaceutical and pathology outfits? 

   
   

Any form of data, from unemployment to college dropout to causes of death is “exotic” in our country. Have we ever made the ‘quality of information’ an election issue? 

On community health, have we ever questioned?

1. How are people feeling?

2. What is the form of ailment that is causing distress in the area?

3. Report on the state of water and air in the region? 

4. How long do we wait on common infections; fever, cold and pain etc before seeing a qualified doctor?

What effort have we made to improve the quality of conversation that we have been having with the health care providers, doctors and nurses alike?

1. How long does the conversation last? 

2. Do we ask the doc why a certain med is being recommended? 

3. Why is a certain investigative test important? 

4. How informed is the decision that we take?

   
   

What kinds of incentives have we provided for both the political class and the healthcare professional to behave ethically and in our interest? 

We are responsible for the mess that we find ourselves in. We refuse to ask questions, we refuse to bring them to book for not doing their jobs!

Let me give you a data point, India is among the countries with the highest out of pocket expenditure, as much as 64%, on total healthcare expenditure. Individuals, can’t have the knowledge needed to assess the correctness and the applicability of the treatment being provided therefore it is needed for the Government to legislate and being a layer between citizens and the healthcare system.

We can call it insurance or give it another name. If there is one thing our PM does right, it is naming schemes, I am sure he can come up with something fun.

Below items could form the outlines of the legislation. A law to regulate the flow of money into the healthcare system.

1. Citizens who can afford to pay the insurance, should pay a proportionate amount, it could be made another tax at the source of the income.  For those who can't, the Government steps in for them.

2. The agency on our behalf keeps the hospitals in check. 

3. Grantee of care and outcome is ensured by performance metrics and related rewards and penalties.

4. Direct payment has to be completely ruled out.

5. The agency works in consonance with the public health care function of the government to make sure that hospitals anticipate health care issues and stock supplies to facilitate seamless care.

6. Every piece of information, from input to output; is made publicly available.

7. Modernisation of the healthcare system is made into a mandate. 

   
   

For things to improve we will need to become citizens. An informed citizenry, asks questions of the establishment, uncomfortable and difficult ones. Keeps the power in check. Sadly, in the last 7 years, we have been reduced to subjects. We are fed propaganda and we indulge in worship and that precisely is the reason for such grand apathy from the Government.

It is high time we change!

India floating lifeless!

Freedom fighter, original thinker, prolific writer, a true statesman and also, fortunately, the first PM of Independent India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, in his seminal work, “Discovery of India” gives an account of his travel to the far and wide corners of the land in the pre-independence era, in most of these excursions he would hold interactive sessions with the local peasants. He would often pose the question, ‘Who is this Bharat Mata’ to his audience? Different people would respond to the question differently and then he would in summary educate the group by saying, every Indian is a unit of Bharat Mata, therefore, every Indian is a representation of Bharat Mata, and in that manner, every Indian is indeed Bharat Mata (I am paraphrasing it from memory, read the book some 20 years ago). This book was published, 4 years before India got her independence; the scholar penned down this book, while serving a jail term, in Ahmed Nagar Prison. At the time, the Crown’s representative in India had outlawed Indian National Congress and incarcerated all its core members and leaders. Fast forward to 2021, India is independent, but the grand old party finds itself in the cage of its own incompetence and political bankruptcy. It is the principal opposition party in the Indian national parliament though with fewer than 60 seats. The very organisation that once had the privilege of calling stalwarts like Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, likes of Nehru among others, their members, in modern India is a Nehru-Gandhi family-run enterprise and does not count for much in the political opinion space. Indian people have stopped taking it for an earnest political force, chiefly owing to the loose-foot, unserious and sporadic politics of its de facto president, Rahul Gandhi.

Do not worry, this article is not another addition to the vicious and continued slugfest that a vast majority of Indian media has been subjecting the collective political opposition to the ruling BJP to without breaking a sweat for the last 7 years. It is a mere recognition of the resulting shrinking opinion and political space of India's political opposition. So I thought that it is important that we recognise how much of a decline Congress has seen in the course of the last century, as without which understanding the rise of the BJP is impossible. You may also be wondering why have I invoked the definition of Bharat Mata, as delivered by the first PM, in an essay titled to convey concern around the ongoing pandemic. It is because I find no other suitable frame of reference to recognise the lifeless, unidentified, unaccounted and disgraced Indians floating in the holy river, in hundreds between my home state Bihar and UP, and I needed to find a collective identity for them. Collectively both of these states hold the key with MP and Rajasthan to the Lokshaba. UP alone has given India most of its PMs, even the incumbent is serving on a Varanasi ticket and yet the states are in such disarray that they do not have the economic means to conduct the last rites of their loved ones and are therefore force by poverty and social stigma surrounding Covid to give the death of there friends and family such an ugly end. Does it not say a thing or two about the politics that is prevalent in the Hindi heartland? The number of those who have perished outside the official count is unknown at the moment, it is being assumed to be anywhere between 2 and 8 times the reported number, by leading experts in the field of epidemiology. 

Ever since I saw the images and the videos of floating corpses on the holy Ganga, between Bihar and UP, I have not been able to come to terms with it. My mind wonders, what must have been the mental state of those who transported the dead to the banks of the river for such undignified disposal. Surely, they must have felt sick, unhappy and helpless. How easy or difficult it must have been for them at that moment to feel proud of being an Indian. In that grim and dark moment, would the bearer of the bodies pay heed to the mighty propaganda floated by the rulers of the day? Would he have cried that night? What words he might have chosen to convey to his masters that the dead have been gotten rid of? Would he have been sent again with more bodies for another trip to hell or would he have chosen to retire for the day at the end of one round of disposal? Was he paid for the job? Did his hand tremble on accepting the remuneration? Did he sleep the night that followed the abandonment? Could he narrate the story of the day to his family members? I do not know, and perhaps I would never know.

For a moment let’s step back from those involved in dumping Bharat Mata (Indians are Bharat Mata, according to Nehru Ji) on the river to ponder over those who died. Did they have any inkling of what would become of their mortal remains? Did they consent to it? Do they see themselves floating from above (that is if there is such a place where the souls go to, and if they have the vision to see the bodies)? What must be running on the minds of their family and friends? Would they ever forget this ordeal? How must the society around the deceased have reconciled with the horrors? Do the onlookers fear ending to a similar fate?

I am afraid, I do not know, response to any of these.

But what I do know is that a little bit of India also dies with every untimely and avoidable death of an Indian. I can say with certainty that the dead bodies also float the majesty of the Indian state. Who can argue that not counting the death is not honouring the dead? Those responsible for managing the crisis seem satisfied with their performance and have been repeatedly heard saying ‘everything is under control’; what can one say? The visuals of people running around in search of life-saving drugs, battling for admission in hospitals and even the melancholy view of people dying on the pavement of the hospitals - are still, coming from all around the country, and yet the state is missing in action. Goa reported a loss of lives in dozens for lack of oxygen!

When urban centres are being treated in this manner, should I even try emphasising what must be happening in the rural and tribal undeveloped parts of this vast country of ours? It is too much to expect from the media to cover the plight of the villages which have been facing the neglect and the apathy of the urban centres for as long as they've become independent. And yet, thanks to social media, desperate tales have managed to trickle down which are so sad that it can turn even the driest pair of eyes misty and moist. Underlined with penniless migrants facing bleak prospects of the future, who have returned to their homes to avoid the nightmare that they were forced to live when India decided to bolt itself down on a notice of 4 hours, last year; the troubles of rural India are serious and painful.

What have we become as a nation? When did the Government stop caring about its people? Where lies the fault? Why is the government appearing so hands-off in the 2nd wave? You and I know that there is not going to be an admission of guilt, both administrators and the politicians of the day just do not have what it takes to own up; the courage. Indian media is hand in gloves with the central government, not all, but a vast majority of it. The country has fewer journalists doing a sincere job today than it has scientific voices informing the nation about the steps that ought to be taken. Our elected PM behaves like an autocrat and a dictator allergic to free and unscripted press conferences. In the last 7 years in office, he has attended zero press conferences. All that India ever gets to know comes from a handful of bureaucrats, who do what they are trained to do the best; talk a lot and yet say nothing. 

Denial and divergence are the weapons of choice of the current tenants of Delhi.

Completely devoid of any remorse for the shameful handling of the Covid challenge the Government of the day is instead engaging in remarkable chest-thumping. No person of science like in the US briefs the nation with some authority, instead, we have information and broadcasting ministers holding high-level meetings to design a strategy to quash the flake that the Modi administration has been getting both in the domestic and international media and more so in independent social media. The foreign minister calls a meeting for all the ambassadors to tell them to put away if not prevent negative reporting on Modi’s mismanagement of the 2nd wave of Covid. State Governments under the ruling party BJP have gone all out to slap FIRs against those citizens who are trying to call out for help. They have kept hospital owners on the leash as well; CM of UP, Yogi is particularly nasty in this regard. The present-day setup looks anything but democratic.

Modi has not apologised even once for massive political rallies that he and his party members took out in all states that went to polls in the last 2 months, particularly in WB. He has not accepted that allowing Khumbh, was a disaster that has provided a pathway for the pathogen to travel to the far rural parts of the country.

Instead, all the focus is on somehow controlling the narrative, managing headlines and shielding the PM from criticism. From sycophantic tweets to paid advertisements; nothing is being spared in praising the PM, even at the time when dead bodies are mounting in crematoriums and the graveyards. To understand the callous and careless approach of the Government, we will need to understand some of these facts.

• Earlier this year, BJP in its party convention, passed a resolution in which they declared victory on the virus. The text of the letter gives thanks to the PM and gives him credit, at more than 5 places. 

• The PM gave himself full marks for doing an awesome job at handling the pandemic. He declared victory; do listen to his Davos address.

• Vaccine export started with a lot of pomp and show. The foreign affairs ministers tweeted pictures from every dispatch dutifully and were RTed by every other cabinet minister. The common thing in all of this is that everyone thanked Mr Modi and praised his ‘leadership’. 

• Later, when the pressure mounted BJP party spokesperson Mr Patra, admitted that as much as 84% of the vaccines that were dispatched were done as a result of a contract that the manufacturers had signed with the countries and organisations from where they had imported the raw materials; pure commercial exchange.

• The rest was sent for inoculation of Indian forces working in the UN peacekeeping mission. 

• Meaning, nothing more than 1 Cr. was sent across as help to other nations.

• But this fact was kept hidden from people. The propaganda machine was working overtime to announce how formidable and invincible Modi had assumed leadership of the world and he was determined to heal the hurting humanity by sending these vaccines over.

• The declaration of India being the vaccine factory of the world was also repeated several times.

• WhatsApp carried this fake news to every corner of India, even those corners where ambulances and oxygen cylinders did not reach, to save the dying.

• Even the pictures of global help reaching Indian shores were publicised, presented as some sort of victory for Modi’s diplomacy. In reality, those were humanitarian donations made by concerned nations. Most people do not know that it is the first time in the last 17 years that India has stooped so low as it is having to clutch on to the straws of donations from other nations to survive. If anything it is a decline of the image that India has carefully crafted for itself.

• When the world was busy placing order for the vaccine for their people, our leadership, was busy mounting an electoral conquest of West Bengal.

Masks, social distancing and hand hygiene are important but strenuous methods and are extremely difficult to sustain over long periods of time for a population as large as that of India. It is common knowledge that through vaccines and only vaccines can we hope to tame the pandemic and yet when the entire world was busy ordering doses for their population last year, Modi made no such attempt. He practically held our hands and walked us to this precarious mess. Today, when India is recording ½ of world cases and most of its daily deaths and the medical infrastructure of the country has completely collapsed, the Modi administration has made the unfortunate situation even worse by forcing in bizarre vaccine policy, which is : 

• Differential vaccine pricing for the states and the centre. States will have to pay more, double the price the centre has paid for the "same" vaccine. 

• Center will take 50% of the vaccines, 25% will go to the private sector and only 25% will ever reach the states. Note here that the centre has accepted to vaccinate just about 30% of the population, that is 45 years and above and yet wants custody of half of the vaccines produced.

• It has levied 5% GST on vaccine imports.

• Given the acute shortage of vaccines the states are being forced to float global tenders, which will effectively mean that one Indian state will compete against all other Indian states in the global market: no matter which states win, Indian people are sure to lose in this contest of stupidity.

If the supply side of the vaccine was not problematic enough; they have further complicated the matters with the process of registration.

Mandatory online registration on the Co-win application is making vaccine access more inequitable in an already unequal society. 750 million Indians own a smartphone with an active cellular internet connection (roughly, 60% urban and 40% rural). But the extent to which they use the phone for “digital operation” beyond messaging, is just about 44% of the 750 million people. India’s population is no secret. It is baffling to note that Modi, the policymaker of the day is criminally ignoring this brazen gap and is refusing to accept registration becoming a roadblock to successful vaccination just as vigorously as they deny the critical shortages that are killing people in thousands every day; many folds more unknown and unregistered than known and accounted for.

‘Triplicate’ is likely to be a part of your vocabulary, if you’ve worked for the government or had the misfortune of dealing with its machinery on serious matters. Lazy bureaucracy subservient to not just thoughtless, unimaginative but also considerably and decidedly illiterate political class, is flaunting their newfound love for mobile apps, keeping the memory of 'triplicate' alive. It is being done to soothe the senses of the unicorn rider who came up with the “Digital India” campaign to boost his image. The administrators know that only 6% of rural and 25% of urban households have a functional computer at home, according to National Sample Survey data from 2017 - and yet, he insists on mandatory ‘Co-win’ registration. The glorious past of the ‘Aarogya Setu’ app is still fresh in the memory, it began with a data leak, a suit in the court and a subsequent affidavit by the Govt acknowledging that they do not know, ‘who designed the architecture.

 

This policy will create ground for extortion of the poor; it will mushroom a fleet of agents who would squeeze the most vulnerable in lieu of “registering” them. Much like the bygone days, which saw "agents" outside Passport and RTOs, available to be hired for all manners of work-from filling forms to faking driving assessment.

None of this should surprise us though because the country at the moment is being led by the same stable genius who thought, pulling 86% of all currency bills off circulation suddenly, will end the problem of black money, solve the menace of counterfeit currency and break the back of terror funding forever. What actually happened? 99.999% of the cash made its way back into the banking system, thereby an official cleaning of all the money (black and white) happened. Both terror and counterfeit continue, there has been no reduction either in their intensity or frequency. In fact, the most ghastly terror attacks on Indian forces, 3 of them have actually happened after this historic move. Our current PM is such a reckless maverick that he thought that locking 1.3 billion people inside on a notice of 4 hours will eradicate Covid in 21 days; instead what we are experiencing here in India is the worst impact of the 2nd wave. We are topping the world not just on the caseload but also on unfortunate deaths, that is just on the grossly undercounted number, as has come to light in recent reports. The little we say about the plight of the migrant workers, job losses and resulting hunger and poverty the better.

In my lifetime I have never witnessed the stark duality of multifaceted India in such prominence as found in grim images of abandoned dead bodies floating in the holy river perhaps with the hope of attaining salvation in the afterlife despite the indignity that these souls have had to suffer in death at the hands of inept “system” on one hand and the unabated construction of the new parliament and brand new home for the PM in the mid of raging pandemic, on the other. If the 2nd turn of the virus on us is being called a “wave”. We should brace ourselves for the tsunami of death by starvation, coming towards us; as countless millions drop to the bottom of the social and economic structure and scale. Mass drop out from school will deny India a generation of ‘educated and skilled’ citizens.

When rulers of the day are lost in just the ‘seen’ effects of the pandemic, it is anyone’s guess how much they must be up to the task of the ‘unseen’ challenges that this threat poses.

India needs the spine it showed in 1960ties when it converted acute food shortages into the reason for the “green revolution”; then the country adopted science. The current leadership has thus far embraced arrogant denial and shameless silence.

Take care and stay safe; we are truly on our own!