Monday Post

On the Covid front-it looks like that the intensity 2nd wave is now coming down because during the last week, the total number of cases in a week have come down below 3lakh, this has happened after three weeks when the cases per week were crossing the 4 lakh figure. But there is a matter of concern, as the number of deaths during last week has shown an upward trend and has gone up by 4% over the last week. With the death toll of 27, 243, which is the highest for the country during any week, the last highest death toll was recorded during the week of Jan 11, 2021, which was 24,262 deaths. Yesterday’s case count was nearly a 30% fall from the peak daily cases of  4.14 lakh recorded on May 9, 2021. The daily cases in all the metros and major cities have also started coming down, and shown a big downward trend during last week.

The massive second wave has shown how authorities are often unable to sufficiently ad effectively marshal even those resources available to them. There is widespread anger of the public against the politicians for bungling on various issues. The so-called experts and old-fashioned bureaucrats stand exposed to when needed most during the time of crisis. To take command of resources and make them useful to citizens, governance needs to go into a critical reset process.

Take the cases of Ventilators,  before the pandemicIndia just had 40,000 ventilators and the center’s sourcing of nearly 50,000 ventilators to state in a short time was a big achievement. But then came the inability to function and put these ventilators to the right use was a great letdown. Many ventilators are dysfunctional: 80% of 2025 ventilators unused in Karnataka, 40% out of 109 in Bihar, 90% out of 320 in Punjab, and 73% out of 1900 in Rajasthan. Excuses like lack of trained staff, shortage of medical consumables, and fear of malfunction were cited for failure to make these ventilators operative. Other states where the ventilators were despatched did solve these issues and made use of the ventilators.  The authorities can not hide their institutional failure to commission training and maintenance for the ventilators,

Now take the case of Goa, a state which is among the highest per capita GDP, yet failing to iron out the oxygen supply problems at just one hospital very close to the govt headquarters, which led to several unavoidable deaths. The CM and Health minister appeared to have been working at cross purposes. With the Covid wave shifting to rural areas, centers and states are belatedly scrambling to provide testing and oxygen facilities to villages. It was feared during last year migration of workers will give rise to the cases,  the same thing is happening now again but now the number of cases is increasing in small town and villages. But nobody is held accountable for the months lost in scaling up rural healthcare facilities

Many shocking media reports of govt hospitals crumbling under covid caseloads expose the inadequacy of top-level governance. Few states have attempted a meaningful decentralization of power and funds or encouraged MPs and MLAs and panchayat members to collaborate with state capitals and the district administration to resolve the local needs. The PM has proposed audits and encouraged states to honestly depict their actual Covid situations. But audits are really valuable when they are constructive.

Indian politicians should learn from the politicians from other developed countries where at the time of national calamity they all join hands to work for the betterment of citizens. But in our country, the parties which are in opposition have only one work and that is to just criticize the govt all the time, even when the govt is doing something for the betterment of the public. In January when the govt announced the approval of vaccines, all the opposition leaders started saying that these vaccines are not having good efficacy and these are BJP vaccines and we will protest and see that in the states where we are ruling vaccine dose is not administrated. And today the same leaders are saying that vaccine is in short supply and govt is fooling the people. Govt has explained the vaccine situation, but these leaders instead of working with govt are working at crossroads and spreading negativity against the govt. Govt might have bungled on the vaccine issue, but instead of trying to work out a solution with govt, they are just opposing the govt. This is high time our polity should improve. Nobody has envisaged that the pandemic will take this turn and cases will increase manifolds, these opposing politicians should put themselves in govt’s shoes and think about what they would have done in the present situation and sit with govt and discuss the issue across the table instead of having media war.

God save the country from all these types of politicians.

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Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

17th May 2021