The one thing we do not need in this awful time is for political leaders to start telling lies. We need the truth. What we are getting are lies. The first big lie came from Yogi Adityanath who declared that there was no shortage of oxygen, beds or drugs in hospitals or Covid centres in his state. He warned that stern action would be taken against those ‘spreading rumours’ about shortages. This is no empty threat. Journalists have been jailed for telling the truth in Uttar Pradesh. This time it will not be easy for Yogi to jail journalists for telling the truth because it is manifest in the pyres that burn night and day, in people begging for beds in hospitals and in those who die outdoors hospital gates.
More worrying than Yogi’s lies was the pitiful try by the Minister of External Affairs to get our embassies to ‘counter one-sided narrative in (the) western media.’ What is the other side? Is there a further side to mass pyres in our crematoriums? Is there a further side to folks dying in hospitals for want of oxygen? Is there a further side to these dying outdoors hospitals simply because there are no beds offered? Is there a further side to hospitals posting notices outdoors their doors warning patients to not count on admission simply because they have no oxygen?
The western media is reporting what is getting reported across India by Indian journalists. With one distinction. They do not hesitate to blame the Prime Minister for this catastrophe. They do not hesitate to remind him that just the other day he told the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting that India had performed so effectively in controlling the pandemic that the world could understand from us. They do not hesitate to remind the Prime Minister that even as this lethal second wave was spreading across India, he along with the Home Minister have been celebrating the big crowds at the election rallies they addressed in West Bengal. They do not hesitate to mention that nothing at all was performed to cease the Kumbh Mela till it was as well late. Indian journalists do hesitate simply because criticising the Supreme Leader has consequences.
If Modi desires redemption, he demands initially to admit that blunders have been made, and that he commits himself to not generating any more. This second wave would have come anyway but it would not have been catastrophic if we had adequate supplies of vaccines, oxygen and Covid drugs. In this ludicrous and pathetic work to handle perceptions rather than the pandemic we now have higher officials and senior ministers squabbling openly about who is to blame for the blunders. It does not matter who is to blame.
What matters is that there is nearly not a single loved ones in my circle of mates and acquaintances into whose home this dreaded virus has not discovered its way. There is so a lot death and illness in the air that folks are now terrified of going anyplace even if they have been fortunate sufficient to be counted amongst the handful of Indians who have managed to get each shots of the vaccination. There is such a serious shortage of vaccines now that chief ministers admit they can’t go ahead with vaccinating all Indians more than the age of 18. Within hours of the announcement that this was going to be permitted from May 1, more than one crore folks had registered on the official app. Why was this programme announced at all when the shortage of vaccines is a crisis in itself?
The next important crisis, as the cardiac surgeon Dr Devi Shetty has pointed out more than as soon as, is going to be a serious shortage of physicians and nurses. He has written articles detailing how this shortage of manpower must be handled but so far there has been no action from the Prime Minister’s job force. Dr Shetty warns that in the next handful of weeks there will be a shortage of 3.5 lakh healthcare employees and 5 lakh ICU beds. Will an individual up in the cloistered, virtual world inhabited by the Prime Minister and his higher officials please listen?
These officials have blood on their hands. People have died simply because of their criminal incompetence but not one head has rolled. Why? If Narendra Modi desires to redeem more than his image, he ought to sack the males who have brought us right here. We have to have a new job force that ought to include things like scientists, physicians and competent officials. Indian bureaucrats have a lengthy history of failing India in instances of crisis. This occurs simply because of their inability to think that they can make blunders and simply because of their colonial instruction to serve the rulers and not the folks. This time desperate Indians are paying the value for their arrogance.
Today, we will understand the final results of this round of elections, but I have not pointed out them in this column. This is not an oversight but deliberate. I am so sickened by the obscenely big election rallies that went ahead when folks have been dying that I no longer care who wins. Modi’s BJP, and it is now completely his, cares so a lot about winning elections that this time they have cared more about the West Bengal election than about discovering a way to cease Indians from dying.
The Prime Minister ought to accept that it is useless attempting to handle perceptions when he demands to handle horrendous realities.