Coronavirus Part 31, Limiting the Burdens of PM, Natural Disaster

 

             To take stock of the situation once again, the pandemic is receding a bit and the curve is falling from the peak. There has been a drop in the weekly average number of cases by almost a lakh from 3.5 lakh to 2.75 lakh. If the country bucks up and act responsibly, there can be a fall in the cases going ahead. The five states of Maharastra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh are contributing heftily to the list. Maharastra is way ahead with more than double infections than the second placed Karnataka in terms of total infections accrued from the beginning. One puzzle is why there are still these many cases recorded when these five states are under strict lockdown since past few weeks.

             Indians are good at pretending to follow lockdown but don’t actually follow it. The case in the point is Maharastra which went into curfew mode since April 14^th. This is since 40 days and still the infections are hovering around 30000 today. Infections cannot be drastically reduced through a pretentious lockdown. It is not just for the leaders but the people who needs to act extremely cautious, with self-discipline and impose self-restrictions. You are not answerable to the police or the administration but to your own self. Same is the case with Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala. There is a danger of losing both revenue and lives with this flimsy lockdown. When you say lockdown, it is a lockdown in true sense and nothing else. People must not be seen in groups, everyone must stay at their places without movement, borders closed and everything shut with the commitment coming from the people. Those who follow this are highly appreciated and called socially responsible. Let us all become more conscious of the people suffering due to the virus and observe a self-motivated lockdown to bring down the cases.

             Talking about the self-motivation and self-discipline, Indians are heavily dependent on the leaders or governments to control the pandemic in particular and everything in general. We require someone doing a hard job of controlling the people like the teacher controlling the students. When will we become systemic, methodical, disciplined, empathetic without chaos and confusion ruling the order of the day. If progress of the people is measured in terms of pandemic behaviour, U.S.A and India ranks first,second from the bottom. Both have become pandemic rogue states. A problem which should have been solved in few months have been prolonged to more than 15 months. A simple fallout of this behaviour is students who have lost two academic years. All the students who should learn, enjoy in schools, colleges with teachers, friends have grown up by losing their student life. I still remember how well I spent my student days which are the best of all. The present age kids have been robbed of their institutional life by their reckless adults.

             A silver lining is the kids learned a lot in this setting with what they were exposed from their homes. The tenth class results of my state speak volumes about their maturity and learning. Of the 5 lakh odd students who studied tenth class, no one failed. All the government school students are also declared passed. This is in contradiction to earlier years when pass percentage is a mere 30-50% in public schools. Around 41% of 5 lakh students scored a perfect 10/10 GPA based on internal formative assessment. Everyone falls back on their tenth class assessment numerous times as they grow up and this is a perfect pandemic blessing to the deprived students. One of the students from a nearby public school called me and happily informed that he scored a perfect 10. Perfection etched on his face for the rest of his life. He is a mere average student in earlier classes when I taught him but these scores uplifted his morale.

             It is required for all these students to make up for their losses and give a good future. The teachers did not give the result just like that. They passed all the students and awarded 10/10 for most of the students because they thoroughly deserve them. When I am a well behaved and a good student who did good work, I used to get good marks in college. More than the concepts and knowledge of the subject, these students deserve the results for their exposure to pandemic world and fighting back the human enemy. As a dialogue in a movie goes, they deserve 100% marks in life which are awarded though they merit 0% in studies.

            Going back to the theme of dependency on leaders, the Indians are heavily dependent on their PMs to change their fortunes. The framework of our system is as such that it requires super human efforts to be a PM of the country. The PMs need to lead the country, drive the country, grow the country and sacrifice for the country. There is a huge burden of 1.38 billion people sitting on the shoulders of the PM. There is a tremendous power placed in the arms of the PM of India. There is a huge traction and accountability for a PM of India. There is a huge challenge in changing the fortunes and growing the billion plus citizens faced by the PM of India. The job of being a PM of India is the most testing, tiring position with an onus to uplift the mammoth underdeveloped country into a developed one.

             The Indians who are still very primitive in relation to the world are heavily dependent on their soldier-in-chief to make them relatable, relevant in the world. There is a monopoly as far as the centre of power is concerned which is heavily owned by the PM. There is no limit on the distance or the extent to which a PM goes to rule the country fruitfully. The PM goes to any extent which is beyond the comprehension of the common man. The authority is heavily centralised in the sub-continent with 29 states. The PMs of India has to become a superman with a robotic functioning in order to serve the country and meet all its needs.

             This huge flaw in putting a heavy load as a responsibility of the PM of India has to be changed. The PM is also a mere human and treated as such. There should be minimum accountability and attribution of the image of country to that of a PM. Earlier, people went to the extent of calling ‘Indira is India or India is Indira’. How come a PM be synonymous to the country. The all-pervading powers of the PM should be curtailed or limited with checks and balances in place to limit the authority. There has to be many centres of power which should drive the country. The welfare of the entire populace should not be placed in the hand of a single person. The governance has to be extremely decentralised with responsibility going to many shoulders.

             The various schemes on the name of PM should not be pointing back to the single person in putting the required work for those schemes. The framework should be more robust in limiting the burdens of the PMs. The citizens of the country should be self-driven, self-motivated without heavily depending on the commander-in-chief. The growth and well-being of the people should be a concern for people themselves. The people should be great, not the PMs should be great. The PM can be just like any other person leading his own life. I hope there will be more reforms in this important area of functioning and purview of the PM of India.

             Going back to the covid, how much of the accountability with respect to the severity is attributed to the management of the pandemic by the PM. It is less than zilch by all counts. The simple truth is PM is not at all accountable for the severity and spread of the pandemic. Moreover, we tackled the pandemic far better with our motivated frontline warriors and governance. It is truly a phenomenon of a century. Let me draw some analogy to the Spanish flu of 1918-20 in India. The Spanish flu wreaked havoc in India from 1918-20 in three waves. The second wave is deadlier of the three waves with high mortality rate. Nearly 1.2 crore people died in India during the Spanish flu pandemic which is highest in the world at that time.  It is 5% of the population wiped out. There are no social messaging apps, no facilities, no SOSs, no infrastructure etc. Just plain suffering and death. The flu ravaged Bombay and southern parts of country like today where death rate is very high. River Ganga brimmed with dead bodies in those times. Not just Ganga, all the rivers across the country were clogged up with dead bodies. Gandhiji was also infected by the virus. The country bore a witness to one of the deadly invasions of virus which left more than a crore dead.

            The present day pandemic should also be seen through the same lens and declared as a natural calamity. We can only work towards reducing its affect but cannot overpower it altogether. Nature and its laws are always mightier than the man. The alive should feel fortunate for being alive and those who passed away have their destiny written that way. It is the time of a gamble – the gamble of life and death. No one can do anything about it, not even the most powerful person on this Earth. Analogous to the virus in India in 1918, a third wave will be coming as well after this second wave. The best we can do is to prepare ourselves with all our might and limit the damage. The setting is similar, the virus is similar, the revolutionary days are similar, the waves are similar, the affected regions are similar and the history repeated itself. The only difference is that we have managed it far better this time with the available medicines, vaccines and containment strategies. The death rate is 40 times lesser this time with 3 times more population. This is enough to say we have covered a lot of ground with modern tools and limited the damage by a huge margin.