India is now the 4th worst-hit country in terms of the number of coronavirus infections after the US, Brazil and Russia. Supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government can always argue that when two of the world’s super powers—with arguably the best available medical infrastructure and research—couldn’t escape the wrath of the pandemic, Modi too can’t be expected to do much.
However, Modi’s lockdown—government’s central response to check the virus spread in India—was one of the most strongest shutdowns in the world with a stringency score of 100, the highest possible. And yet, the country is reeling under the pressure of rising coronavirus cases that have now crossed the 3 lakh-mark. The Modi government, obviously, made a lot of mistakes since hastily announcing the lockdown.
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Spreading disinformation
Vinod Paul, member, NITI Aayog and chairperson of the national task force constituted to advise the Modi government on Covid, presented a mathematical model on 24 April at a press briefing where he claimed confidently that there would be no new coronavirus cases in India from 16 May. And most of us believed him. Up until we reached 16 May and realised we’re in the eye of the storm. Evidently, the government’s task force seems to be headed by fiction writers rather than credible data crunchers. In fact, epidemiologists from this task force have gone on to anonymously testify that they were rarely ever consulted by the government for their inputs on coronavirus and the measures that would actually help, one of them being aggressive testing and tracing.
Narendra Modi thrice extended the lockdown and yet failed to do the one thing that could save the day for India—testing. Instead of using the lockdown to scale up testing facilities, the PM only chose to address the nation for some morale boosting by either asking Indians to clap for frontline workers or to light candles to wish away the darkness caused by the pandemic. India didn’t need morale boosting. It needed solid policies. In fact, the PM emphasising on these things only furthered an unscientific temper. This was evident in the WhatsApp forwards which propagated superstition and misbelief, with claims such as lighting candles at a particular hour or clanging thalis could help kill the virus.
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PM’s irresponsible messaging
In fact, Modi made ‘irresponsible’ statements, asking the nation to fight and defeat coronavirus in a 21-day war, just as the Mahabharata battle was won in 18 days. The country did not need false promises of escaping the pandemic through a 21-day lockdown. Indians needed a reality check. People needed to be briefed by the PM, if not weekly, then fortnightly, so that they could brace up for the next few months, conserve resources, stay alert and not stigmatise Covid patients. But Modi didn’t bother with any of this. He still refuses to face a press conference.
The long, ill thought-out lockdown has pushed the country headlong in the deep end of the economic conundrum that it faces. And the worst hit, both by the disease and the lack of money, are the poor. The world became witness to the labourers’ crisis that unfolded in India. The politics over it has been detestable too. And the late response and initial stonewalling towards the miseries of the poor is typical of Prime Minister Modi. While the critics expected it by drawing the example of Narendra Modi’s silence during the demonetisation mess, his supporters brushed off the labourers’ crisis as inevitable.
But the fact remains, people died due to bad lockdown implementation. And it cannot be written off as inevitable collateral damage during a pandemic. No country has seen death of the poor due to starvation or lack of resources in the fight against Covid at this scale, except India. India is not assuring any social security to its poor. And who is supposed to be responsible for this? The victims themselves? Modi’s supporters will have you believe that it was the fault of the poor who died while they tried to go back home. They expect the poor to have stay put, wherever they were, even if it meant they were evicted from their rented shanties or didn’t have food to eat. The monstrosity of victim shaming during these times was truly diabolical.
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Then came the package
The charade of self-reliant India now seems to be the only go-to PR strategy. But asking an already crawling businesses to rise up to the occasion by taking loans and kickstarting businesses from the Rs 20 lakh crore revival package that the Modi government has offered is not only an eyewash but apathetic. Estimates from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) show that over 12.2 crore people lost their jobs in India in April 2020, most being labourers and small traders. And if the popular thought is that only the poor are affected, then it should be reiterated that 18 million business-persons are also estimated to have gone out of business in April 2020, according to CMIE.
In fact, women are economically one of the worst hit in this pandemic with many who worked in the informal sector now jobless. Moreover, 23.3 per cent men and 26.3 per cent women employees have lost their jobs, especially in semi-urban areas with factories and industrial zones. Data suggest that 46 per cent of women had voted for the BJP and its allies.
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Don’t act, but blame the opposition
The Modi government has taken cognisance of its failure in handling the pandemic with Home Minister Amit Shah admitting that the government ‘might have gone wrong somewhere’. However, this admission too involved political mudslinging, with Shah passing the buck to the opposition asking them what they had done, besides interviewing people sitting in America or Sweden.
The irony is that Amit Shah chooses to ask this question to those, who he himself, as well as the PM, have on many occasions asserted to have wiped out from the political landscape of India. The whole idea of “Congress mukt Bharat”, has been ambitiously pursued by both Shah and Modi, thus making their questioning of the opposition seem contradictory.
With Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot alleging the BJP of trying to topple his government, it seems, that the Modi sarkar is only looking to ride out the pandemic sacrificing the future of India for their own political gains.
But coronavirus won’t spare the ‘popular’ Modi government. General elections maybe far away, but dominance over the Rajya Sabha, which Modi-Shah ambitiously pursue, is through assembly elections. And elections in politically significant states are just around the corner. Bihar and Bengal. Bihar has one of the largest migrant population. With viral videos of poor men and women breaking into an abusive tirade against the government, PM Modi needs to put a pause on his political ambitions and work on the nightmarish problem of coronavirus he has on hand, which he has so far appeared to have taken very lightly.
The author is a political observer and writer. Views are personal.