Triage is the need of the hour for India’s apocalyptic oxygen crisis. Hospitals are packed, care centres missing. The government must now urgently set up protocols to determine degrees of urgency, prioritise patients by critical care needs and allocate resources optimally to save maximum lives. And a bit of reputation.
On Covid, govt should know foreign media isn’t saying anything that Indian media isn’t
The government’s hammer-handed reaction to foreign media criticism is knee-jerk and paranoid. International journalists aren’t saying something that the Indian media already isn’t about India’s pandemic mismanagement. The government knows that foreign media can’t be intimidated into submission by angry diplomatic rejoinders. These tactics are enacted more for domestic audience.
The virus doesn’t care for causes or beliefs. Time for farmers to suspend sit-in
Farmer leaders should suspend their Delhi sit-in. This virus thrives on congregation, be it Kumbh, election rallies, or protests, however pious or virtuous. Madras HC has threatened EC officials with murder charge for allowing rallies. Everybody can’t make an exception for their own causes or beliefs, because the virus won’t.
Judges get 5-star treatment. Don’t ask why public hospitals and govt hotels are dumps
Delhi HC demands special Covid facilities for judges, staff, families. Dutifully, a Delhi magistrate invokes the Epidemic Act to commandeer 100 rooms in 5-star Ashoka hotel. He also orders Chanakyapuri’s premium private hospital favoured by diplomats to serve these rooms. Don’t ask why public hospitals and government hotels are dumps.
Health is a State Subject. The oxygen supply, vaccine supply and remdeaivir supply is NOT the job of the PM. The PM is not a shipping clerk or a oxygen dealer for asinine journalists and morally banckrupt politicians to question the PM on what is expressedly their domain. They have FAILED singularly but the only narrative by the news traders is that Modi held rallies in Bengal – as if Mamata Banerjee was not or the Congress and the Communists were not!
Please show some intellectual honesty and also find out why Hospitals have addmitted so many patients promising ICU beds without making arrangements for necessary supplies like Oxygen in advance? Why the State Govt like Maharashtra which have large oxygen plants haven’t been able to get their act together, why State politicians discomfited by the Central vaccine strategy sought to. demand that States control it.
Expecting Modi to tie our shoelaces and wipe our bottom is gutter journalism encouraged by a witless press.
100 rooms in the Ashoka hotel sounds more like Pawri hori hai than a grim pandemic, where patients sometimes share a hospital bed. It also places the judiciary in obligation to the government, the largest litigant.
It was on the tip of my tongue to conclude the submission with the sentence, Their Lordships should reconsider. Which they very wisely have.
See the pathetic quality of the stationery the Indian mission uses, complete with hand written e mail ID. Soviet era content, Third World gloss. 2. Global media is telling it like it is. So is a large swathe of the Indian media, although its compulsions and constraints are well understood. 3. Not easy being an Indian diplomat now. Unclear whether they are still candid in their submissions or simply flow with the tide. 4. Rebuilding India’s image and global stature is now an immense task. Not a question of hiring lobbyists or slick PR professionals. The reality should change. Problems arising out of mass poverty and underdevelopment cannot be fixed ( so one cannot judge if Bengal can become Sonar in five years. ) However, the illiberalism, drift away from constitutional virtue is a recent aberration that can be swiftly reversed. Dhool aaeeney par nahin hai.
It’s the other way round. The Indian media is showing what the foreign media is showing.
And they are showing what’s happening on the ground. That’s called reality.
You may have a wish that they instead show something else, like an interview of Modi on how he eats mangoes, or modi dressing up and strolling in his garden with peacocks strutting about. There’s enough of that on Godi media, you can always have your fill.