IN this pandemic stricken world, an observation is doing the rounds. The virus did not break the world; it was broken and the pandemic has exposed this. On a day when the total deaths due to the pathogen has overtaken the Chinese numbers, notwithstanding the prime minister’s colourful fiction inspired ‘Mann ki Baat’ in his personalised letter to the population,  this would equally hold good.
The Indian government’s trotting out meaningless data, as Covid-19 cases rocket amidst lockdown and the wreckages of the economy, testifies to the knee jerk unplanned exercise since the fast spreading pathogen has hit the global landscape.

With a whiff of judicial scrutiny, the solicitor general’s reaction in the Supreme Court gave away the pathetic performance of the government. As Indian Express editorial has brought this out so succinctly, “on a day when the country’s highest court finally, if belatedly, questioned the Centre and the states on the plight of stranded migrant workers, it takes a particularly blind and blatant partisanship, apart from a moral obtuseness, to question, instead, the commitment and credentials of those who are pointing to the unfolding tragedy and calling for urgent redress and accountability. In Mehta’s overwrought rhetoric, they are “prophets of doom” who “only spread negativity, negativity and negativity”, and who are “not showing any courtesy to the nation”. He contrasted them with ministers “working overnight”!

However, there is a global pattern in how hundreds of thousands are getting infected (possibly many times more than the confirmed cases) and the list of dead is growing exponentially, and capitalist economies have come to a standstill, with a global recession now virtually inevitable.

The foremost public intellectual Noam Chomsky has been spot on in locating the pattern, “Scientists have been warning of a pandemic for years, insistently so since the SARS epidemic of 2003, also caused by a coronavirus, for which vaccines were developed but did not proceed beyond the pre-clinical level. That was the time to begin to put in place rapid-response systems in preparation for an outbreak and to set aside spare capacity that would be needed. Initiatives could also have been undertaken to develop defences and modes of treatment for a likely recurrence with a related virus” and went on to add “But scientific understanding is not enough. There has to be someone to pick up the ball and run with it. That option was barred by the pathology of the contemporary socioeconomic order. Market signals were clear: There’s no profit in preventing a future catastrophe. The government could have stepped in, but that’s barred by reigning doctrine: “Government is the problem.”

THE IMPERATIVE OF UNDERSTANDING GUJARAT
In the last five months since the WHO had announced that the new novel virus Covid 19 posed a serious health challenge for the entire humanity, developments have confirmed with deadly effect that Chomsky was dead right. The raging global pandemic was waiting to happen. Essentially there are three major factors which have played out to create this catastrophe. The neoliberal aggressive with the single minded emphasis on putting market and profit over the people; the process was essentially exclusionary and therefore, completely unsuited to a health disaster which warranted an inclusive approach. Secondly, the uninhibited policy approach also accentuated inequality and poverty within and across nations. This made a large section of people at the receiving end of this process with health conditions far more vulnerable to the impact of the pandemic. Finally, the jettisoning of science and scientific ideas leading to proliferation of blind faith, thereby de-empowering populations to adapt responses at the personal level including personal hygiene and act as active participants in the resistance to transmission of a fast spreading viral infection.

Chomsky has also spotted the major hot beds of the pandemic. These are US, Great Britain, Brazil and now, as per the latest data, India. These are situations where these factors are at their fiercest aggressive. It is necessary to recognise that for these very reasons, Gujarat has emerged as an extreme instance for such a course within India.

‘Gujarat Model’ was never real which the corporate sponsored propaganda Blitzkrieg made it out to be for almost two decades. ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ imagery was based on hundreds of MoUs between corporates and the government. This overshadowed the reality which an overwhelmingly large section of people were subjected to.

The fact is, Gujarat has 0.33 hospital beds per thousand populations compared to the national average of 0.55. In terms of per capita health expenditure Gujarat slipped from its fourth position in 1999-2000 to eleventh position, with health expenditure as percentage of Net State Domestic Product (NSDP) declining from 0.87 per cent to 0.73 per cent during the decade. Infant mortality rate in Gujarat is extremely high. Total number of primary health centres in Gujarat is less than Bihar, with rural public hospitals being only a third of that in Bihar. On top of it, large numbers of government hospitals have been privatised.

The absence of a robust public health infrastructure is accompanied with a decline in investment for education. Gujarat spends less than 2 per cent of its income on education. Consequentially, nearly 45 per cent of the state work force are illiterate or have studied only upto the fifth standard. The poor quality of higher education has resulted in a growing number of unemployed professionals, engineers and science graduates. It is no surprise that 90 per cent of the work force is in the informal sector with very low incomes and virtually non-existent social security. High decibel propaganda has obscured that Gujarat has one of the lowest wage rates among major states in the country. Therefore, the responses to the lockdown among the migrant workers in Gujarat, particularly in Surat where the conditions are squalid should not surprise us. Given all these facts, it is, therefore, imperative to see the reality beyond the myth of ‘Gujarat Model’. The virus has really brought out the ugly underbelly of the broken system that Gujarat constitutes.

POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE FAULT LINES
We are acutely aware of the general lack of preparedness in India for facing the wrath of the global pandemic. Since the announcement of WHO on January 5 about Covid 19, and the sharing of the genome sequence of Covid 19 on January 11, almost two months was at our disposal to prepare the nation and the people to face the attack of the pathogen. However, the political priorities of the ruling dispensation have derailed the process of preparations. First and foremost among these were the unprecedented loud preparations for welcoming Donald Trump eulogised by the ‘Namaste Trump’ buzz. This was on February 23-24. Even before Trump had left India the communal cauldron was lit up in Delhi which left scores dead. And the toppling of the opposition led Madhya Pradesh government in the middle of March diverted the attention of the top brass further.

Since the key players of the country’s decision making apparatus hails from Gujarat, this should provide clue to the lack of planning and preparedness, so much so, that on March 13 the ministry of health came out with the public announcement that ‘there is no public health emergency’.

Baptised and perfected in the Hindutva laboratory of Gujarat, the top leadership had bred a culture of extreme centralisation and politicisation of the administrative apparatus which has promoted a brazen process of socio-economic inequality and divisiveness. No wonder that throughout March, the ruling party in Gujarat, driven by its obsession of absolute control, went on an overdrive to capture one additional seat in the Rajya Sabha. It is, therefore, no surprise that building coordination between the public health community and different departments of the government and municipal authorities took a back seat and precedence for undertaking these urgent tasks was superseded by the building of the wall to hide the ugly reality of the poor and the vulnerable assumed a pathetic spectacle.

(To be continued next week)