Nitish Kumar’s moniker of ‘sushasan babu’ fast losing sheen as floods and COVID-19 wreak havoc in Bihar

Bihar is one of the most populous and poorest states in India and fares poorly in most of the development indices. The reins of power in the state have been primarily with ‘Sushasan babu,' a moniker attributed to CM Nitish Kumar, for the past one and half-decade. However, the recurring annual flood in Bihar and the administration’shelplessness in dealing with it has given people reason to question his ‘sushashan.’

And, even as the state is bound for polls amid the global health pandemic, the rampaging health crisis has been put on the back burner by the administration. Bihar’s health infrastructure which has been in a dilapidated state is now veering towards total collapse due to this COVID-19 contagion.

The state, which has so far reported over 43,000 COVID-19 cases, has been witnessing a huge uptick in recent days. This is when thousands of cases are going unreported and untested. Nitish Kumar’s administration has been lackadaisical in standing up to this challenge despite an alarm across the country over the virus.

The state has already been overwhelmed with reverse migration from different parts of the country following an unsound and unplanned lockdown.Bihar has so far received around three million migrants amidst the lockdown who have gone unscreened for the contagion.

Nitish Kumar’s Govt has earmarked only four hospitals for COVID-19 for a population of 124 million. A state which had been reeling from lack of adequate health facilities and poorly-equipped frontline health workers is now witnessing COVID situation spiraling out of control. The health workers at apex health facilities in Bihar operating as COVID-19 centres such PMCH, AIIMS, Nalanda Medical College, Bhagalpur’s Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital are putting up a fight without even basic protective kits. The situation can be gauged by the fact that more than 250 doctors and health workers have contracted the contagionso far.

The TPM (Tests Per Million) rate in Bihar is one of the lowest in the country while the positivity rate is one of the highest. It has not even carried out 5 lakh tests in the entire state. The state enormously failed to grasp the gravity of the pandemic and an outcome of this is that it didn’t even gear itself up to brace the impending crisis.

Most of the districts in Bihar don’t even have ventilators and the requisite resources to man it. Bihar has the lowest ratio of doctor and bed in India; figuratively it has one Allopathy doctor for a population of 28,391 and one hospital bed for 8645 people. And, as per the media report, Bihar has only 6434 oxygen supported beds and 570 beds in ICU for the entire state. The posts of over 40% of the health care workers are unoccupied.

The state Govt did not utilise the nationwide lockdown to ramp up its testing capacity and notwithstanding the fact that health is a state subject, CM Nitish Kumar’s administration continues to rely heavily on the Union Govt. There is a dearth of testing facilities in the districts and the people have been queuing up for up to a week for a COVID-19 test, even as the results are delayed. The daily optimum capacity of the Govt sponsored labs to carry out RT-PCR (Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction) is far lesser than 6000, a standard test accepted globally.

Furthermore, the availability of a bed and admission in the hospital is another daunting issue that remains unaddressed. The privilege of having a political connection is the only way for a patient to get a bed. The outcry of not being able to avail a bed is conspicuous amongst the affected. Even if the beds are vacant, it has been reserved by the powerful.

The state’s administration has never been sincere in its fight against the contagion since its inception. To surmise, even the quarantine centres set up for the returnees were in shambles and subpar by most accounts. The inmates have often complained about the poor quality or non-availability of food, sanitation, and security at the centres. There haveinstances of sexual assault on female inmates and fatalities due to snakebite in the quarantine centres.

Contact tracing of the infected was not taken vigorously and nor were the ASHA and sanitation workers were equipped with proper safety kits. The Govt of Bihar in its admission to the Supreme Court of India has stated that there are vacancies of 57% doctors and 71% nurses in the state and yet no new recruitments were carried by the Govt. Even before the dawn of the pandemic, health infrastructures remained feeble.

The floods along with the rising COVID-19 cases is a double whammy for Nitish Kumar. Floods havebeen a perennial problem in northern Bihar which wreak havoc every year. As of now, more than 12districts of Bihar are heavily impacted by the flash floods wherein over 2.4 million people are said to be affected. The deluge has also marooned over half a million people in their homes and has claimed 10 lives. Water has seeped into several areas due to breaches in the embankment. Despite this, Nitish Kumar’s administration has been in slumber over the years over the situation.

CM Nitish Kumar continues to be in denial over the flash floods and has refuted to designate the impacted districts as flood-hit. State authorities have been delinquent in carrying out and providing relief measures. Such is the situation that inundation has compelled police personnel to desert police stations and operate from vehicles in Darbhanga. Who can forget the fury of last year’s floods when the deputy CM of the state was driven out of his home in the state’s capital.

Yet, the ruling coalition is unperturbed and focusing on its reelection bid in the upcoming assembly election. The ‘sushasan’ which has held sway over the people of Bihar for the last one and half decade is now facing a litmus test.

(Amrish Ranjan Pandey is National Secretary of Indian Youth Congress and Nirbhay Dubey is a Strategic Communication Consultant)