By Seema Khan
On March 17, 2020 Rahul Gandhi said, “I have been warning the government that a massive Tsunami is coming and they are fooling about, they are not clear about what they have to do. India should be preparing itself, not just for Covid virus but for the economic devastation that is coming.”
On January 28, 2021, Prime Minister Modi challenged Rahul Gandhi’s statement. In a speech at a public function, loaded with his usual arrogance, he roared “where is the Covid Tsunami that we were warned about?” He also boasted that India was among very few countries in the world which had defeated the virus and have succeeded in saving the lives of its citizens, obviously keeping all the misplaced credit to him, forgetting all the wretchedness he caused to migratory workers during lock down, while fooling around with ‘tali and thali’ and ‘diya and flash light’ events.
Well… Rahul Gandhi was right and PM Modi was wrong.
What is happening in India now is indeed a Covid Tsumani. The situation is so miserable that the courts had to move in and start giving directives to the government. The courts not only chided the central government on the lack of preparedness and severe shortage of medical facilities, both the high court and supreme courts have been constantly monitoring the situation, and issuing orders to make things better.
With the recent surge in the Covid-19 case and the second wave sweeping through the country, the Heath system has almost collapsed. There is a serious shortage of life saving medicines, medical oxygen, ambulances and hospital beds. People are literally dying in the streets, and their bodies are being dumped in the river, or buried on the banks of Ganges due to unavailability of cremation facilities, sky rocketing cost of the timber required to burn the bodies, and very long queues outside the crematoriums.
With 300,000 - 400,000 new cases and more than 4,000 official deaths per day, the situation is terrifying. Based on the actual ground data, the deaths due to corona could be 10 to 20 times more than the official data.
The irony is that the high level of deaths are not because of Covid-19, but due to the lack of oxygen, medicines and beds in the hospitals – a man made epic crisis where India is struggling to breathe, resulting dead bodies strewn around in the streets, hospitals, mortuaries, burial grounds, riverbanks and crematoriums. Crematoriums are struggling to cope - to a point where the electrical furnaces have melted because of nonstop operation.
Thousands of crores of rupees were collected in the name of Covid through Prime Minister's fund, but no one can get any information as to where that money was used because it does not come under right to information act, and the government is not ready to divulge any information.
Instead of vaccinating the population of the Country, Indian Prime Minister went on for vaccine diplomacy by sending millions of doses to other countries, just to build his personal image.
In a recent TV show, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra admitted that, since we have to borrow the technique and research for producing vaccines from other countries, it was required to give them certain amount of doses in return. Patra could be right, but the question remains as to why a country like India, with a large number of scientists, doctors and scientific research organizations like CSIR, ICMR and CDC was not told to work on the virus and research? The answer is simple, research involves money and the Government of India did not spend adequate money on those researches, while throwing enormous amounts on their election campaigns.
Is there any answer to the question of why only two companies are making a vaccine for the corona virus? A number of leaders, including the Chief Minister of Delhi – one of the hardest Corona hit states – have been making appeals that more companies should be given licenses to manufacture the vaccine. But their appeals seem to have fallen in deaf ears.
Despite warnings from the second wave from the experts and the epidemiologists, no preparation was done by the union government. Instead, a lot of government machinery was diverted to the state elections.
Massive political rallies in West Bengal and other states became the spreading venues of the virus, where Covid protocol was not followed by the Prime Minister, the Home Minister Amit Shah or any other political leader and ‘star campaigners’, who were addressing huge rallies without any mask on their faces.
BJP government in Uttarakhand decided to have Kumbh mela in Haridwar, an year before it was due, with obvious nod from the Central government – another ‘super spreader’ event with a total disregard of the consequences. The Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, when asked if the event will increase the pandemic, replied “Kumbh is at the bank of the River Ganga. Maa (mother) Ganga’s blessings are there in the flow. So, there should be no corona,”
Observing incompetence of the union government in managing the situation, some of the High Courts had to move in and start sending directives to the union government to increase the supply of oxygen and other needs of the patients. The Supreme Court of India too moved in and passed a 64-page order to the central government to ensure an adequate supply of oxygen to Delhi and other states and, warned the centre to make sure that Delhi received its assigned quota of oxygen.
The question is what was the Indian government doing for the last one and a half year when the scientists, doctors, and epidemiologists were predicting that the second wave would be deadlier than the first. Unlike the first wave, this was not unexpected, or it deprived the time to the government to prepare itself. During that gap of an year and half, the government of India could have vaccinated at least half of its population, instead of indulging in ‘vaccine diplomacy’ by sending vaccines to other countries. India is said to have exported vaccines to 40 countries so far.
Also, while people are dying in thousands per day, a huge amount of money is being spent building the Prime Minister's residence and the Central Vista – the money that could have been spent to build hospitals, Covid related facilities, and crucial supplies like oxygen, medicine and vaccine.
The money spent on the grand Central Vista is the not the only wastage of the public money that could have been used on Covid management to save lives. The budget for Kumb Mela was Rs 4,200 crores (42 billion), Donald Trump’s visit to India and Namaste Trump - Rs 125 cores, Ram temple - Rs 2,500 crores, which could have been diverted to save hundreds of thousands who died of Covid-19, instead of begging for aids from the foreign countries.
Indian government, led by Narendra Modi, ignored the warnings from the experts, doctors, and the scientific community, that the second wave will be a lot more deadly than the first one. Instead of planning and preparing for the catastrophe, or Tsunami per Rahul Gandhi, they were focused in winning the state elections. They boasted about the numbers of people attending their rallies – the rallies without any Covid protocol, which became the super spreader of corona virus, leading to the lethal second wave.
According to a report, half of the people tested for Covid-19 just after the West Bengal elections came out positive. Couple of days later; West Bengal reported the highest one day Covid cases and deaths.
Read: India: Bengal reports 17,501 highest one-day COVID cases, 98 new deaths
Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the mother organization of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), and its leader Mohan Bhagwat seem to be very critical of Modi's handling of the Covid situation. In his recent speech in an event to ‘generate positivity’, he seemed to have backed the opposition claim that Modi ignored the warning of the second wave. Another RSS leader Ram Madhav in this article in the In Indian express was critical of the government wrote, “Initially the government looked like a deer in headlights”.
The international media too has been very critical of Modi Government’s handling of the pandemic - many of them holding Modi solely responsible for the country’s disastrous second wave.
Le Monde A French Newspaper in its editorial said that more than 2,000 deaths and daily 350,000 positive cases are a dangerous situation, and attributed it to Modi's pride, arrogant attitude, his lack of planning, preparing and warning the people of the coming second wave. It accused the Indian government of going ahead with the election rallies.
The Guardian, another reputed news paper, had directly accused Prime Minister Modi of the current situation.
The Washington Post, CNN and several other media outlets have criticized the Indian Government for the ongoing central vista project.
“While the people wait for life-saving oxygen and Covid-19 patients die in thousands, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pushing ahead with a $1.8 billion parliamentary revamp including a home for country's leader”, reported CNN.
London based Daily Mail wrote “the monstrous monument to Narendra Modi’s ego: As millions suffer in a pandemic, India’s narcissistic prime minister is building a vast folly at the cost that could fund 40 major hospitals. Now his nation is in uproar.”
News channels like CNN and other prominent channels have been constantly covering the situation in India and holding him solely responsible for the situation, with some calling him “Superspreader Modi”.
Hashtags like #MissileModi, #superspreaderModi were constantly trending on social media.
Centre for Disease Control CDC is located in Pune, with many epidemiologists working in it and it handles all the research related to epidemics and viruses. But since it is located in Pune, which falls in Maharashtra and is ruled by Shiv Sena, an opposition party, the central government seem to have decided not to enter the ‘enemy’ territory, and gave the responsibility of Covid research to ICMR.
Though ICMR consists of a bunch of doctors and scientists researching the medical field, not a single epidemiologist work here, hence zero results as far as Covid is concerned.
Its an irony that fifteen out of the twenty world renowned epidemiologists are from India. But the research responsibility for Covid was not given to any of them – another foolish decisions of Narendra Modi for which Indians have to pay the price.
Shruti Kapila, a professor of modern history and global political thought at the University of Cambridge, in the context of the Covid situation in India, said “State cruelty needs to be named, blamed and punished. That alone will dignify death that is tormenting India. The State can succeed again. But any acceptance of Modi now means the acceptance of cruelty.”
Top Virologist Shaid Jameel has quit the Covid panel after criticizing the government. He was the head of the forum of scientific advisers which was constituted to select the varients of coronavirus. In his article in The New York Times, he said that the Indian scientists are facing a “stubborn response to evidence-based Policymaking”. He further accused the government of total mismanagement, with low level of testing, slow pace of vaccination, and paucity of vaccine and medical workforce.
About 900 Indian scientists have written a letter to Prime Minister Modi demanding access to the data that could help them in studying the virus.
To add to the misery of the people, many of whom have lost their jobs, businesses and livelihood, the Indian Government has decided to go for looting its people by imposing the highest taxes on petrol and diesel in the world, instead of giving them some cash to keep their heads above water. Instead of making the vaccine free for all, Modi government is charging GST on it, which amounts to more than Rs 40.
As many have started seeing it now, including some BJP leaders and supporters of Modi, this is a man-made disaster and all those responsible should be held accountable.
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of UMMnews.
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