It may be
particularly distressing to realize that the lockdown is not the most difficult
thing to achieve for the government. The system, however debilitated, exists.
One has to issue the instructions. There definitely are the issues of the incapacity
of the police and the huge population size. But then, there is the big problem
of the economic consequences, not at the macro level but at the micro level,
for that is where the immediate distress lies. The success of a government is
not to be measured in terms of the good intentions of its policies, but in how
well these policies are able to achieve those intentions. The lockdown is a
necessary evil, and the Prime Minister has repeatedly mentioned this over various
fora. However, the responsibility of the government doesn’t end with accepting that
it is an evil, but it is equally responsible for curtailing the bad effects of
its decision.
I read today that the home
quarantine is a luxury. It indeed is for a section of us. The post, by a
journalist from NDTV, Sohit Mishra, elaborated upon the hardships that the
unfavoured sections of our society are facing amid the lockdown. We all live in
our bubbles, be it the extroverts or the introverts, both facultative and
obligate. Even as we venture about in the world around us, be it physically or
digitally, we make friends and companions who match our opinions and fit in our
worldview. I particularly find it extremely challenging to connect emotionally
to any person or group that is obtuse to my understanding of the world. People lining
up at State borders is exactly the opposite of what the government had in mind.
It is absolutely contrary to the well-being of these people. However, this is a
desperate attempt by a desperate people who used to earn a hand-to-mouth living
even when the economy was in full swing and are now left with zero savings.
The pandemic comes to India in
the midst of an economic downturn when there was already widespread unemployment.
Add to this the living costs in an urban area like Delhi or Ahmedabad when the
supply lines are being throttled due to misadministration, leading to potential
inflation.
This is a very apt critique of
the unfettered capitalist society. Over the last few days, one of my neighbours’
aged father fell ill. He had been down with tuberculosis with some time and suddenly,
there had come up a build-up of fluid in his lungs. The 80-year old didn’t eat
anything for days and ended up with flesh hanging from his thin bones like rags
drying over a wire. The couple have only one daughter and she too is disabled
to some degree. None of the neighbours showed up to help the three. When the
daughter, a friend of my mother, asked us for help, her pleas were petty but
monstrous in the situation of a lockdown. The hospital where she routinely got
her father checked had all beds filled. Other hospitals were too costly for her,
and often, the facilities under Ayushman Bharat were suspended. On contacting the
108 Ambulance service to finally resort to the public healthcare system, the
ambulance declined to help. Apparently, in preparation for a blow-up of
COVID-19 cases and possibly to prevent infection with the virus, the ambulance
and the hospitals had stopped admitting senior citizens above the age of 80.
Desperate, she asked me if there
was any way out. The public healthcare system had failed her. The independence
of the country had failed her. Taking her father from hospital to hospital for
two days, she lost three thousand rupees just in engaging private ambulances,
which weren’t able to provide even the necessary oxygen gas supply owing to the
lack of supply. It was only for the lucky availability of a vacant bed in her
regular hospital that she was able to put her father there.
It is the poor who bears the
brunt of any extreme situation. Not only is the poor on the receiving end of
the fallout, but it is often him who is considered responsible. There might be lakhs
in the country using all sorts of language for those who want to go back to
their villages. This is but a result of limited thinking which itself
materializes in the bubbles that we live in. However much we may sympathize
with the poor or patronize the rich, we tend to see everyone with the lens of
solidified stereotypes. We have stereotypes for the rich and the poor. The
rants of the celebrities about “If I can stay home, why can’t you?” equates
them with the rest of the public. It is not the same.
I have been told at least three
times since the lockdown started, that my primary focus should be spreading
awareness regarding the need for the lockdown, instead of criticizing the
government for its inability. However, in such a condition, it is very much
essential that the government be brought to senses. Criticism is necessary in
the best of the times as well as the worst of the times.
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