Our worst nightmares are coming correct. The pestilence has spread into the heart of rural Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and is causing unspeakable misery. Too several are dying and households who are as well poor to invest in wood for cremating the dead merely push them into the Ganga. Last week, bodies began piling up along its banks. Some had been cremated by villagers or buried in shallow graves, other individuals rotted in the sun and got eaten by dogs and vultures. Local officials are mainly absent and when they seem, as a BJP lady politician did in a UP village when bodies had been becoming pulled out of the river, they deny that something is incorrect. It is very regular for Hindus to give their loved ones a ‘water burial’, this lady stated, when a Television reporter questioned her about the death toll.
Denial is the shield that the BJP’s mightiest leaders have been utilizing ever given that the pandemic reached catastrophic levels. Yogi Adityanath is amongst these who have utilised it most. He continues to attempt and persuade the persons of his state that there is no shortage of oxygen, hospital beds or medicines. Denial becomes pointless when dead bodies start out to wash up on the banks of the Ganga. Denial becomes useless when persons continue to die in hospitals across the nation from a shortage of oxygen. This is a message that appears to have not reached the Prime Minister. If it had, he would order his ministers and higher officials to cease lying about the correct horror of what is taking place.
He would start out listening to the reporters who danger their lives to travel into rural India to attempt and inform the truth. Instead, he enables trolls ‘proud to be followed by Modi’ to get in touch with these reporters ‘vultures’. Has the Prime Minister not noticed however that this contagion will by no means be controlled till we know the complete extent of its spread and the genuine death toll? Denial has develop into a useless tactic for the reason that distinguished scientists and medical doctors in other nations have began saying openly that the quantity of persons dying of Covid in India could be as a lot as 20 instances larger than the official figure. The BBC reported last week that half the Covid circumstances in the world are now in India.
We are in the middle of a national catastrophe the likes of which most of us have by no means seen ahead of. When the Prime Minister gets out of denial mode, he may possibly notice that he requirements all the assist he can get. The Opposition leaders who came with each other to create him a letter supplying tips on how we can uncover our way out of this catastrophe must have been invited for a discussion. Instead, the letter they wrote was dismissed by his minions as an try to spread ‘negativity’. The most vital thought that came from these Opposition leaders was that the procurement of vaccines must be centrally controlled or the mess that currently exists on the vaccination front will develop into worse.
The only way that we are going to win the fight against Covid is by vaccinations. And it can not be repeated frequently sufficient that the job force charged with procuring vaccines failed abysmally. When this became apparent, Mr Modi announced that state governments must uncover vaccines from wherever they can. No, Prime Minister. This is your job. State governments can only take charge of the logistics of vaccinating persons as quickly as attainable.
After dumping the policy mess on chief ministers, came more proof of confusion last week. The man who heads the Covid-19 job force, Dr Vinod Paul, all of a sudden emerged to announce that involving August and December, “216 crore doses will be made available” in India. He did not clarify how this will be attainable in such a quick time. But if he is nevertheless in charge, then let him give an affidavit in the Supreme Court that guarantees this and clarifies no matter whether these vaccine doses will be procured by the Central government or state governments.
Denial is the key purpose why the Prime Minister has not however set up a new crisis management group. When he comes out of denial mode, he may possibly see that a new job force must consist of chief ministers and Opposition leaders along with scientists and medical doctors. A crisis of this magnitude can not be handled any more by the Prime Minister’s Office. So far it has been, possibly with the intention of enabling Modi to take credit, as he did last time. In the initial wave his devotees by no means failed to remind us that, devoid of him, there would be ‘corpses piled high in the streets’. Now they are not just piling up in cremation grounds but washing up on the banks of our most sacred river.
We know this for the reason that of some superb reportage by India Today, Barkha Dutt, and a modest army of regional reporters who have risked their lives to bring us the truth of what is taking place in rural Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Instead of praise for their service, trolls deployed by the BJP abuse them everyday for what they get in touch with ‘vulture journalism’. Modi remains silent in the face of this sort of sickening charge made not just by trolls but by BJP spokesmen, and this have to imply he approves. This tends to make him look like a leader who is more worried about his image than the nation.