Stay safe everyone: ‘8 PM’ is busy on Twitter and Government is watching television

Here we are, in lockdown, happy and confident in the ability of our dear Central government to keep us safe.

The Prime Minister, dubbed ‘8PM’ by some brilliant anonymous person, for his tendency to make frightening announcements on TV at eight in the evening, has been busy on Twitter as well as tying up with Facebook so we can get instant information about the Covid19 virus.

The Union finance minister took three days to unleash a mitigation plan on the nation. The problem is, sadly as usual, it came as too little too late. The scuttlebutt is that she had no idea that she was head of this “task force”. I suspect, and this is pure conjecture, she was looking forward to the lockdown because of the I&B minister’s great Covid19 plan.

O yes, the I&B minister. He announced that he has “requested” Door Darshan to begin reruns of the Ramayana tele-series. To some of us old enough, this brought back memories of Arun Govil’s constipated smile and arrows that shot across the sky taking two second breaks every five seconds. To those of us wise enough, this brought up horrific memories of how the Sangh Parivar used this tele-series to build up its strategy to make Lord Ram India’s national god.

The Union health minister and the BJP President took 8PM’s advice to look after nine families for nine days and went one above. They generously distributed 10, yes, 10 food packages.

The Union home minister however appears to be AWOL(Absent Without Leave). Less sightings of him than of a Great Indian Bustard.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile. Hundreds of thousands of panicked Indians had to leave their places to work to try and get back home to eke out the lockdown. They had lost their jobs, they had little or no money and no shelter. They were India’s migrant workers, the backbone of India’s informal and organised sectors. They were beaten up by the police, shunned and dehumanised.

As if the Covid19 virus was not scary enough, the Centre made matters worse by putting India into a lockdown without giving anyone the time or space to make arrangements. Shutting all forms of transportation at short notice shut people off from their homes. Fear of the virus, thanks to shoddy information-sharing led to several landlords throwing tenants out. The constant blaming of China by some TV anchors had terrible repercussions for people from the North-east and for Indians of Chinese descent as well as visitors from China. The lack of coordination with state governments was appalling.

If any meaningful work has been done by governments in India, it has been by state governments, most of them, non-BJP. Even if they did not anticipate the problems of India’s less privileged, they were faster to respond. Unlike the Centre which did not respond adequately, if at all. Many chief ministers have been in constant touch with the people, through press conferences, TV appearances, and social media.

What Covid 19 has demonstrated to us in stark relief is just how incompetent our emergency response systems are. News about the virus has been constant since January. But governments continued as if nothing could ever happen to us. All 8PM’s announcements were ill-thought out and unprepared. There appeared to be no backup plan at all. First make a grand speech. Then let someone else pick up the pieces.

We have no clue as of yet just how bad the virus is in India. We do know that the Indian Council for Medical Research was reluctant to increase testing and even now, testing is abysmally low. There are contradictory reports of how much screening of returning air passengers was actually done and how effective home quarantine systems have been.

Apart from India’s poorest, the worst affected sector has been healthcare. Doctors and auxiliary medical staff work day and night without adequate protection and equipment. They are desperate and most of their appeals have been ignored.

The clapping on last Sunday evening was our biggest contribution. Enough hospitals are not involved and the meagre Rs 15000 crore for medical infrastructure announced by the Centre becomes more meagre when you realise that the Centre has set aside Rs 20,000 crore for redesigning Delhi’s Central vista. The vast problem of non-Covid19 patients has not been properly addressed either.

So here we are. The great Indian right-wing middle classes have been ranting against the ungrateful poor who are starving on the roads for being lazy.

The poor are helpless. Some of us are housebound. And the government is watching television.

Stay safe, huh?