COVID message: Wake up India!

Amid moving visuals of patients gasping for breath and overfilled crematoriums, we need to realise that a narrative can never be a substitute for good governance, that not to be too trusting of leaders is an essential condition to ensure democratic accountability

Every crisis scrambles a message that people must decipher. But such a challenge the second wave of COVID-19 does not pose, for the message to us should be loud and clear: Wake up India! For far too long its people have mistaken slogan for intent, spin for truth, and acronym for skill in governance. For far too long we have been under the spell of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has mesmerised us with his incessant chatter of making India the Vishwa Guru — teacher for the entire world — and turning its economy into a $5 trillion one.

We were too busy imagining the future promised to us to even notice death, bearing the name of SARS-CoV-2, creeping upon us. And now, our eyes well up as people die for the lack of hospital beds and oxygen supplies, and crematorium staff work overtime to perform the last rites of the dead. We shudder at the thought of contracting SARS-Cov-2, wondering whether we can access medical help in an emergency.

It is time we realise that the Union government’s Ayushman Bharat is an insurance-based medical care programme, facilitating access to what has been for a long time a broken public health system. 

Ayushman Bharat was not designed to mend, let alone improve upon, the creaking health infrastructure that has now palpably collapsed under the rising tide of COVID-19. We are a nation of lotus-eaters, preferring to relish the dreams spun for us than to question why India should be spending just a little over 1 percent of its GDP on public health.

We should have woken up on the evening of November 8, 2016, when the Prime Minister demonetised the currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. We patiently stood in queues to exchange the old notes for the new, believing it was our national duty to vanquish the corrupt, to ensure that black money did not warp our economy and imperil national security.

We should have woken up on July 1, 2017, when a midnight session of Parliament was convened to launch the Goods and Services Tax. This was an imitation of the historic event organised on August 14-15, 1947, to herald India’s independence. Those keen on making history are prone to taking decisions without assessing the drawbacks or making adequate preparations for implementing them. For an example from the past, think of Mohammad bin Tughlaq.

For an example from the present, think of Modi, whose government was grossly underprepared to execute the GST. There were multiple bands of taxes; too many rules were framed and changed; the system often collapsed in the initial months of implementation. Demonetisation and the GST, as was predicted, began to slow down the economy. We should have been warned at the government choosing to sell the GST as an instrument to compel the dishonest to pay the taxes to the government they would conceal earlier. We should have read in it the Bharatiya Janata Party’s tactics of presenting one enemy after another for us to vent our frustrations upon.

Muslims have been BJP’s pet hate for decades. But to this list have now been added urban Naxals, student leaders given to voicing their dissent, Dalits striving for dignity, journalists wishing to preserve their independence, civil society organisations fighting for the rights of people, farmers who happen to sport turbans, and even women in ripped jeans and cigarettes between lips — in fact, anyone who is inclined to singing a tune different from the one the BJP belts out, that India is fortunate to have Modi steering its wheel. He is infallible; he is nonpareil.

Modi believes in the image he has created for himself. This is what had him to prematurely trumpet India’s triumph over the pandemic. This is what had him to believe his slogan of “Vocal for Local” was the magical mantra that could have India produce vaccines in a quantity required for us to acquire herd immunity. His confidence lulled him into thinking he would not need to secure vaccines from pharmaceutical companies based abroad, to even allow the Mahakumbh and hold massive election rallies where COVID-appropriate behaviour was not followed.

SARS-CoV-2 is not an enemy Modi and the BJP are as adept at fighting as they are against imaginary foes. As the virus smothers life, India should re-assess the spin and fibs the BJP engaged in the past, such as the jailing of 16 academicians and civil rights activists accused of being part of an urban Naxal conspiracy to foment the Bhima Koregaon violence in 2018. Think of those whose opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act has led to their incarceration on the incredible charge of engineering, in 2020, the communal riots in Delhi.

Wake up India! Our enemy is not this or that group, but the virus that stalks us at every breath. We need to realise that a narrative can never be a substitute for good governance, that not to be too trusting of leaders is an essential condition to ensure democratic accountability, and that a safer — even if staid — present is infinitely preferable to the psychedelic dreams that Modi conceives for the future.

The writer is a senior journalist. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.

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