Just like last year, Modi govt has left people to fend for themselves as COVID ravages the country

India has entered a new horror phase of COVID-19, which no other country has faced till now. According to reports, there were 3.16 lakh new cases on Wednesday, the highest ever for any country. The number does not include those in Ladakh and Tripura, either the suffering or the dead.

So far, India was one among the three highest pandemic-ridden countries in the world. Now it has moved even higher. There are pyres burning on the footpaths (in Ghaziabad), in green spaces (in Gujarat, despite its so-called ‘model state’ status), bodies piling up outside mortuaries that are overflowing and the capital looks ghastly. Everywhere, the smell of death looms large.

Those suffering in hospitals, or homes, in isolation, which is a luxury, or in crowds, even primary facilities are missing. With the pandemic, understood to have entered the stage of community spread, and oxygen getting scarce with every passing day, all measures of defence stand demolished.

The calamity has befallen our people because the government failed to act in time, said an investigation. It was only after eight months that bids were invited for over 150 oxygen generation plants costing just Rs 200 crore. It is now six months, and most of them are not even operational.

There were requests made by the chief ministers of Delhi and West Bengal urging the PM for extra beds, oxygen and permission to buy drugs directly through state funds, but they are yet to get any reply.

It is this passivity that has brought the crisis and people have started dying without even getting any help, and this makes those in power responsible for the unbearable results of the cruel centralisation.

Discontent keeps simmering, as bereft of any help, the masses stand alone facing the horror of the seemingly-invincible disease. There is no explanation for the gross negligence, hence there is no other option left except bringing serious charge against the government of politicising COVID-19.

It may be pointed out here that foreign portfolio investors managed to pull out Rs 4,615 crore from Indian markets since April, as COVID-19 had already begun spiralling high. It led to consequent restrictions, scaring the overseas investors.

Gold imports, which have a bearing on the country’s current account deficit, rose by 22.58 percent, which amounts to 34.6 billion dollar, about 2.54 lakh crore and all this due to increased domestic demand, as Commerce Ministry data showed.

The story does not end here. With little or no food to sustain, with absolutely no assurance of protection, migrant workers have started heading home from many cities. Unemployment conditions are getting abysmal with every passing day. The rate of unemployment was 6.9 percent in February this year. In January, India added 11.3 million persons in the number of unemployed.

During the first Corona explosion, unemployment rate in India rose to 8.4 percent in April-May. In a country-wise comparison of rate of unemployment, India ranks at 86, and its unemployment rate stands at 8.5 percent in the entire world, which presents an extremely gloomy picture.

The massive crowds of working masses, with kids and seniors, and also the luggage they had accumulated during the years in Delhi, facing COVID-19 and unemployment, faced unspeakable hardships in the course of their homeward journey.

Whatever they had earned was spent on primary needs, and with nothing coming as income, not only little babies and old people, but even the able bodied suffered from hunger pangs.

Then there is the uncertainty about their future. Last time they had walked as they got stranded due to lockdown, but this time they are taking buses and trains that are already overcrowded.

But will getting home resolve the crisis? Till last year, rural economy stood sturdier than the industrial regions. But last year during the lockdown, the NDA government at the Centre promulgated several ordinances, and among them three were for the agrarian sector. In fact, seventy-six bills have been passed as ordinances between 2014 to 2021.

All the three ordinances which were aimed at opening the doors of our rural sector for the corporates and destroy the farmers soon became Acts as soon as the Parliament started functioning with the brute majority the government had. Farmers refused to accept it and rebelled in their novel way. Their dharna, peaceful, and undeterred has been continuing for more than 145 days on Delhi borders.

The protest has spread over to other areas of discontent as well. There are the workers, students, and other masses, who usually don’t resort to violence. The protest has spread over the entire country. Many of them perished during the movement, but optimism persists.

(IPA Service)

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