Herald View: The PM-CM-DM approach cannot deal with the pandemic  

Ordinarily, Indian industrialists do not publicly criticise the government. The relationship is too close and incestuous to allow them to break the silence. On the contrary, they have always been willing and available to defend the government and its record. After all, year after year these industrialists have effusively rated union budgets between eight and ten, out of 10 even when budget proposals were unimaginative, pedestrian and potentially disastrous. They have also been in the habit of falling in line even faster than the media at the slightest dog whistle from the North Block. The criticism of the continuing lockdown and the government by Bajaj Auto MD Rajiv Bajaj would, therefore, have come as a surprise. Bajaj told a TV channel that the present crisis might have been caused by a virus but is being spread by the government.

The lockdown in the country, he felt, was arbitrary and has done more harm than good. The government, he added for good measure, was expected to work sensibly, implying that the government’s handling of the crisis has so far been devoid of both. Bajaj reiterated what is already known, that the lockdown can postpone the spread of the virus but cannot contain it. He also echoed what experts have been saying, that a significant percentage of the population need to be infected first to help build a ‘ herd immunity’ to fight the virus. The lockout, therefore, should be lifted and barring the vulnerable sections of the society, the elderly and the ailing, everyone else should be allowed to get back to work. This would help arrest the downward slide of the economy and help the poor regain their livelihood.

But instead of acting sensibly, the government has come up with one draconian rule after another. The rules issued by the Home Ministry say that an industrial or commercial unit could be sealed for up to three months if a single employee is found infected with COVID-19. Such provisions will discourage employers from resuming economic activity due to unpredictability of government action. That the government is stumbling blindly through the crisis is evident.

A month into the lockdown, there is still no standard operating procedure laid down for hospitals and medical professionals. That so many of them have tested positive and some have died also point to the acute shortage of Personal Protective Equipment. While private practitioners and hospitals have shut down their clinics and OPDs, there is still no clarity about the do’s and the don’ts.

While the Centre allows BJP-ruled states to mobilise buses to transport pilgrims, students and workers stranded in other states, opposition-ruled states are denied permission. While Inter-Ministerial teams are sent to opposition-ruled states to take stock of lockdown violations, such violations in BJP-ruled states do not seem to bother the Centre. Besides engaging in politics in times of a pandemic, the government has also unfortunately failed to end the all-pervasive fear in society about the virus

The fear and misgivings are such that husbands have turned out wives fearing they would get infected. Family members who tested positive have been abandoned. People who succumbed to the deadly virus, have often been denied a dignified funeral. And the government appears to have wasted the opportunity provided by the lockout to make preparations. The shortcomings of the top-down ‘PM-CM-DM’ approach in dealing with the pandemic stands exposed.