IT is extraordinary that the current pandemic has not brought forth a wave of support for enhancing India's public health infrastructure. While a section (only a section, mind you) of the intellectual class, and some leading figures of industry and commerce, have expressed their support for the idea, the extent to which the idea has not caught the public imagination is truly surprising. Surprising because everywhere else in the world, public health has become a real demand, echoed widely by many sections of public opinion.Why is public health not yet a demand in India?

IT is estimated that more than 6000 NRIs had come to attend the ‘Namaste Trump’ event. Nobody has gauged. Only on March 5, the screening at the airport started.  The large number of private health facilities was refusing to cooperate with the government. While the state health secretary informed the media that there is no epidemic and the Epidemic Act has only been invoked for legally empowering the administration, this was not invoked to address this problem. The testing was low; the frontline health workers were denied PPE and other necessary gear to insulate them from infection.

GEORGE Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis (Minnesota) police officer on May 25. He was unarmed and had been accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill. The officer – Derek Chauvin – knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes. Eleven times Floyd said, ‘I can’t breathe’. The entire brutal episode was captured on a cell phone camera. Three other police officers either restrained Floyd or prevented bystanders from intervening. The video went viral; it revived memories of a cycle of police killings that became very visible after the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014.

THE Union government launched ‘police action’ on September 13, 1948, on Hyderabad State to force the Nizam to accede to the Indian Union and to suppress the spreading Telangana peasant movement. Except in a few pockets, the Nizam’s army did not resist the Union forces and surrendered themselves. The Nizam himself, surrendered within five days – on September 18, 1948.People and armed squads utilised the opportunity of the ‘police action’ and attacked many razakar and police camps, destroyed them and seized arms and other material.

AFTER a sudden declaration of the nationwide coronavirus lock-down on March 24, the labour contractors and employers swiftly fled the scene. Except for lip sympathy, the state and central governments did nothing for the migrant labourers.Thousands of migrant workers who have been trekking the national highway of Bengaluru-Anantapur have the same story to tell.