Hospitals are overwhelmed across India. Neither there are beds available in hospitals for patients, nor is space available in crematorium or graveyards. Patients and bodies are making long queues to be admitted. There is acute shortage of medicines, oxygen, healthcare personnel and resources to dispose of the dead.
The hell of India seems to have been created in which we have been witnessing the horrifying daily records of new patients and deaths, which reached a new peak of 3.46 lakhs cases of new Covid-19 infection and over 2624 deaths in a single day. Some assessments say this second wave will be at its peak sometime at the end of third week of May. India may soon find bodies strewn on the streets.
Prime Minister Modi’s leadership is held responsible all over the world and is being criticised for driving India into such a miserable condition. Real data was allegedly suppressed by incorrect counting of infections and deaths on the one hand and testing efforts were drastically reduced after the peak of mid-September 2020, resulting in steep fall in detection of new cases. On the basis of this false data, PM went on harping on winning corona battle during the first wave. It misled people to behave as if they were out of danger, crowding market or public places and gathering in large numbers is social, religious, or political events.
Though India heard Modi’s lecture on Covid-appropriate behaviour on a daily basis, he was seen unmasked addressing large assembly of unmasked people on his political errands. Under his leadership, India started fighting corona battle with superstition, like beating of utensils, flashing lights etc while doing little to strengthen healthcare facilities.
His ministers are telling people even today to recite religious verses to overcome the infection while people are dying due to criminal neglect of scientific health measures. PM Modi was seen interested primarily on arrogating his ideas, and his ministers and officials remained busy in implementing them despite serious shortcomings, which created the present mess in which we have fallen. Now, he is trying his best to shift responsibility of the mess he has created himself to the states and the people.
While commenting on India’s present situation, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said the he was concerned about the growing caseload in India. “The situation in India is a devastating reminder of what the virus can do.” People are dying across the world because they are not being vaccinated against Covid-19, they are not being tested and not being treated, he said.
His general comment is also applicable to India. The steps taken by the Modi government since the outbreak of the pandemic are now being analysed all over the world, enumerating his blunders regarding Covid management. PM Modi had praised India under his leadership for becoming vaccine hub and pharmacy of the world, and several developed countries had been supporting and encouraging India, but now Germany has categorically said that it was perhaps their mistake.
The Guardian published an editorial on April 23, titled ‘The Guardian views on Modi’s mistakes: A pandemic that is out of control’ in which it said that “the Indian prime minister’s over confidence lies behind the country’s disastrous Covid-19 response.”
It is true, as the editorial says, Narendra Modi claimed in the beginning of March 2021 that the country was in COVID-19’s “endgame”, but India is now in a living hell.
Modi entertained a misconception about his own ability, and also the ability of his government and the vaccine manufacturers, which led to gross errors in the India’s vaccination programme, which was launched on January 16, 2021. The grave shortcomings in the whole programme were highlighted but Modi listened to no one.
He claimed that India was “world’s pharmacy” at the time when “not even one per cent of the population was vaccinated” which signalled that “pre-pandemic life could resume” leading to larger and larger unmasked gatherings becoming super spreader events. He perhaps did not know, or even cared to know about the real capacity of vaccine production in the country. Large number of vaccine doses were exported even when sufficient raw material was not available for vaccine production at home.
PM asked for suggestion from others to handle the Covid situation “more effectively”. However, when suggestions are given, they are ridiculed in a most uncivilised way, such as we have seen when the former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh recently gave his suggestions.
“India’s death toll was largely avoidable and a result of arrogant and incompetent government,” the Guardian editorial read. “Mr Modi has put the onus on state governments to clear up his mess…He should acknowledge and make amends for mistakes that have caused enormous suffering. He needs to engage with experts on how to uphold restriction; ensure government delivery matches promises…Future historians will judge Mr Modi harshly if he continues with the exceptionalist views that have led to a disastrous public health outcome.”
No Indian prime minister has perhaps attracted such a humiliating comment until now. His sudden announcement of lockdown on March 24, 2020 without preparedness made our economy crumble. The decision was purportedly taken to strengthen the health infrastructure in the country to meet the challenge, but did only a little.
Even life-saving drugs, oxygen, beds etc are in acute shortage. Lives and livelihoods are going through a perilous situation, but the prime minister goes on lecturing the country, as if only states and people are responsible for their miseries, and therefore they are supposed to do everything to clear the mess even without resources, while he is only for lording over them with arrogance and mismanagement.
