Politics, TINA, and our future

I have held definite political views since I was sixteen and never missed an opportunity to vote. I would have voted in around 15 parliament, assembly, and local body elections in Bengal and Kerala. I believe my political positions were consistently correct because 14 times out of 15, my candidate lost. 😊

In my childhood, particularly after 1962, when Jawaharlal Nehru was clearly a broken man, people often asked, “After Jawaharlal who?” Many believed there would be a great void after Jawaharlal’s passing.

Jawaharlal perished, but India didn’t. All India Radio played a pathetic violin for days, but trains ran, buses plied, life went on. In fact, India got one of her finest prime ministers in a simple and unassuming man: Lal Bahadur Shastri.

Continuing the trend of emotional blackmail by the leader of the day, for most of my adult life, a consistent theme of every election has been “There Is No Alternative” to the ruling party. On a national scale, TINA was a mistress of Congress for long. Over the last few years, she’s been with BJP.

There are good reasons why people may believe there is no alternative to BJP, particularly at the centre, including the party’s many strengths like organisational discipline and its bulldog bite.

But more importantly, most post-Congress political leaders, from the two discredited Yadav families in UP and Bihar to Mayawati to Mamta to Jayalalitha have shown that while their ability to govern varied, every one of them is / has been / was corrupt to the hilt. They have also been quick to shift their political allegiance to suit their personal interests. I believe people will never trust Mayawati again because they know she would support BJP whenever it suited her. Why vote for a potential BJP alley when you can vote for BJP directly?

Navin Patnaik is an exception. This silent elderly man has offered an administration without major scams, which is great by the current Indian standards. On COVID too, Odisha did much better than most other states. But Patnaik hasn’t taken a principled stand ever. He hasn’t uttered a word against the many grotesque misdeeds of BJP. No wonder last time, the people of the state voted for him for the assembly while they went for BJP at the centre. Again, why vote a proxy when you can go for the real one?

Moving on to Congress, to paraphrase Ramchandra Guha, Congress has to die if a meaningful opposition is to be born. Clearly, Congress has ceased to be a political party; it’s more like family business. To perpetuate its proprietorial nature, the family relentlessly tries to mythify the Nehru-Gandhi brand. To date, it has not named one policy, programme, or infrastructure project, whether it’s an airport or a urinal, after a non-Nehru-Gandhi, except the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA scheme. Their complete silence during the beginning of Narsimha Rao’s centenary year this June is baffling. The message seems to be, unless you have a particular surname, you would remain an underling in Congress.

However, surprisingly, if there are any senior politicians who have proven record of honesty and competence, you’ll find them in Congress: Manmohan Singh, Anand Sharma, Jairam Ramesh, Sashi Tharoor, Bhupesh Baghel, or at a lower level, Gourav Vallabh. Even in Rajasthan, the Gehlot government proved its mettle during the COVID pandemic, despite internal bickering. I don’t know why these decent people cannot get together, leave Congress, and offer an alternative. For example, why does Sashi Tharoor have to compromise with soft-Hindutwa and get himself weighed in a temple to win an election in Kerala (and injure his head in the process) where BJP is not a factor?

Finally, I think we the people are to blame because we just cannot look beyond established political parties, however discredited they might be. Desperate situations require desperate solutions. Why don’t we at least begin to think of Harsh Mander and Yogendra Yadav as our new Gandhi and Nehru? I don’t think Gandhi did anything different or better during his initial years in South Africa than what Harsh Mander has been doing in India. On the other hand, Gandhi did a lot of stupid things like examining his shit, which Mander wouldn’t care to do. Or in what way is Yogendra Yadav intellectually or emotionally deficient than Nehru?

If these two emerge as the core of our new politics and if decent politicians chuck Congress and join them, we may have an alternative that would capture the imagination of the people. It is possible, as Arvind Kejriwal has shown on a smaller scale. That he has proved himself to be a mini autocrat ready to lick the boots of bigger autocrats is another issue.

Let’s not give up hope. Let’s find a solution.

Wednesday, 05 August 2020

 

Good, Bad, & Caution

Good news first. While India's population is 17% of the world, we have 7% of COVID19 cases globally. So far, so good. Whatever the reasons might be, as they say, let's count our blessings!

The second chart is more important. It says in India, 19 people have died in COVID for everey 1,000,000 people as against 416 in the US. And the graph doesn't say is that in UK, the figure is 687. Once again, we don't know what the precise reasons are, but this seems very low considering our dysfunctional public health system. Let's salute our doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers who have made it happen. Let's also salute the police and municipal workers who went from door to door to keep the pandemic under check. The death rate has been much higher among these groups. Let's bow to the people who have laid down their lives and feel for their families.

The map tells us that there's not a single pandemic in India, there are many. Please check where you are and how serious is the threat to you.

The final graph is disconcerting. It tells us the situation is becoming worse by the day and in one respect, we are where we were in the end of March.

We have no idea when there will be a turnaround.

The purpose if this post is not to spread alarm. Let us make informed choices so that we are as safe as we can be. Criticising authorities won't save us. Our actions might. Let's do what best we can to save ourselves.

I know it is difficult for many, like my colleagues in banks, but let's avoid crowded places and keep two metres distance from others, wear a mask whenever we are out, treat the outer surface of the mask -- by default -- as contaminated and never touch it, and wash our hands (and the mask) when we get back home.

Take care, stay safe.

[All figures are up to 17 July 2020. The graphics are from CNN, who have got the data from Johns Hopkins University and the Government of India.]

19 July 2020

COVID-19, Gujarat, and a Model

With 180,298 cases and 8,053 deaths, Maharashtra is by far the worst COVID affected state in India as per mygovDOTin accessed around midday on 02 July. Gujarat is the fourth state in terms of the number of cases (33,232), which is way behind Tamilnadu (94,049) and Delhi (89,802), the second and third placed states. However, more COVID patients have died in Gujarat (1,867) than in Tamilnadu (1,264). Besides the high fatality rate (5.6%), an article in the Telegraph raises several questions about the management of the pandemic in Gujarat. Let me try to focus on a few major points of the report.

Ahmedabad is one of the worst pandemic-hit areas in India. By 27 June, 1,410 people had died in the PM’s home city and it accounted for over 79 per cent of Gujarat’s deaths.

The Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad recorded 50% of all the COVID deaths in the city. A Gujarat High Court bench compared the hospital to a “dungeon”. You would guess the government took action to improve the situation at the hospital? No. The bench was soon replaced with a new one.

The Telegraph adds that another red flag that the Gujarat government is pushing under the carpet is the case of the “fake ventilators” which were pushed into Gujarat hospitals. The producer of the fake machines is a close friend of the chief minister Rupani. (The bloke happens to be the businessman who had gifted Modi a gold-monogrammed suit he put on during Barack Obama’s visit in 2015.) But in today’s India, these are apparently no scams.

The state government has also “reduced testing substantially, hoping to fudge figures. While other states are increasing their daily testing, Gujarat’s testing graph is decreasing.” In the middle of May, Gujarat was conducting more than 10,000 tests every day; by the end of May, the number fell to under 3,000.

At the beginning of the COVID outbreak, most cases in Ahmedabad were from the old city, where Muslims and poor Hindus live. In response, the government sealed off the entire walled city using police and paramilitary forces. The Telegraph quotes a local resident, Irfan Sheikh, who said, “We have lived under curfew for two months and the police have treated us like criminals. They did not supply us with essentials and beat us if we ventured out to shop for them.”

“It was only when the majority of the cases started coming from “new” Ahmedabad’s middle-class colonies — the backbone of the BJP’s support base — that the government sat up and took notice,” says the Telegraph.

“Over 1,000 fruit and vegetable vendors, shopkeepers and salesmen at grocery markets that had remained open throughout April tested positive and were identified as super-spreaders.”

So, in May, the CM announced a seven-day curfew on the whole of Ahmedabad, closing all essential supplies except for milk and medicines.

“When Rupani should have been gearing up to deal with the coronavirus, he was busy welcoming Donald Trump at Motera stadium. We spent Rs 100 crore on ‘Namaste Trump’ and invited the coronavirus into our homes,” said Kirit Desai, an Ahmedabad resident.

For the mega event, a crowd of 1.25 lakh gathered, with thousands from America at a time when the virus had already gripped New York. Ahmedabad recorded its first COVID-positive case on 17 March, three weeks after the event.

Sadly, as the lockdown has been relaxed, Ahmedabad’s daily COVID cases continue to reach new highs.

You can legitimately ask why I’m writing about Gujarat instead of Maharashtra, Tamilnadu, or Delhi?

The reason is that the so-called Gujarat Model is being adopted in the entire country. At the core of the model lies crony capitalism, a deep disdain for ordinary people in general and Muslims in particular, and a penchant to replace truth with propaganda. A progressive reduction in the allocation for health and education is another important facet of this model.

What India will look like when the Gujarat model is implemented completely offers a chilling picture.

02 July 2020

[Photo courtesy The Hindu, 24 May 2020]

The rich, airplanes, and booze

As civilization progresses, our language becomes more refined. For example, an “underdeveloped country” of the past is a “developing country” today. Gentle Reader, this is not a dig at our beloved Bharat; of course, we aren’t underdeveloped. It doesn’t matter that we are high on the hunger index, or that we have the largest number of stunted children in the world, everyone knows we are planning a mission to the Mars, and we will have become the Viswa Guru as soon as the WhatsApp University becomes the only university in the world.

If you need more examples, a bloke who was a “tinpot dictator” yesterday is a “strong and decisive leader” today. (Once again, this is just a study of the English language, any similarity with a specific person is totally unintentional.)

Neither do we use the expression “filthy rich” outside men’s locker rooms these days. It carries a sense of impotent and vulgar revulsion which the poor often revels in. (And don’t forget that the poor is poor only because of their extreme laziness and lack of drive. Even if they had a little bit of these, they would have become at least a part of the middleclass, like I have.) The “filthy rich” are described as “high net-worth individuals” these days. Close your eyes and think deeply about the string of words in your mind, won’t you feel a sense of reverence for such people? If you have a rosary in your hand, the sense will be deeper.

This morning, after two months of reading about migrant workers and their pathetic troubles, this morning, I bowed in silent admiration when I read in the Indian Express that a “high net worth individual” based out of Bhopal hired a 180-seater A320 aircraft to ferry his daughter, two grandchildren, and their nanny to avoid the mango people teeming with the coronavirus at airports and in-flight. The plane flew from Delhi to Bhopal on Monday (25 May) with the crew alone; it flew back with just four passengers.

The unfortunate lady would certainly have been under much stress and discomfort and my heart melted when I read this touching story of parental love. The cost of chartering an Airbus-320 is round Rs 20 lakh.

My reverence for the pop increased manifold when I read – in the same report – that he is a “liquor baron”, although I must quickly add that a baron is a “member of the lowest order of the British nobility”. This is an insult. How can you think of such a large-hearted and high net-worth belonging to the lowest order of anything?

If I were the papa, I would have sued the Indian Express. But I am not. So, I would only virtually prostrate before this great man, who would have worked really hard to make his pile, besides bringing happiness to millions of ordinary boozers like me.

This man deserves every little comfort in this world and in the next!

*

On a serious note: The social media is like a boxing contest. The moment you throw a punch, you must think how to block the return blow. Therefore, before a smart reader points it out, let me say that I know that to millions of poor Indians, I am filthy rich. But still, I write about the obnoxious economic and social disparity in our country.

And I shall keep writing.

29 May 2020