UTTAR Pradesh is always in the news.  Most recently, several laudatory articles appeared in the national press praising the measures taken by the strongman chief minister to deal with the corona crisis.  Some of the sheen was lost, however, when a video in which the principal of the GSVM Medical College, Kanpur, one of the foremost medical institutions of north India, rants against first the Jamaatis whom she refers to as ‘terrorists’ who do not deserve hospitalisation and treatment.  She goes on to castigate the entire minority community.  While our Party has issued strong statements and demanded her removal and prosecution, the government has remained mum as it did in the case of two BJP MLAs who had themselves filmed threatening and abusing poor Muslim vendors. This is certainly the most ugly facet of what has been the Yogi government’s continuous use of communal polarisation as a political weapon. Its own acts of omission and commission to deal with the coronavirus which claimed its first victim in the state as early as March 5 were invisibilised by its communalisation of the virus itself which was labeled a Jamaati virus. 

The UP government should have concentrated on boosting the state’s very weak health infrastructure in the weeks after the first patient entered India on January, but did not.  The first patients in the state were identified in early March, much before the arrival of Jamaat participants in UP, but that did not stop the labeling of the virus as a ‘Jamaati’ virus and the media helped in creating hysteria around this. Since then, members of the minority community have been arrested and victimised.  The state government has now amended the laws dealing with the control of epidemics to make hiding the disease and ‘deliberately’ (sic) infecting others.  The onus of proving innocence is shifted to the accused who face jail sentences for these acts.  If a person so infected dies, the accused can be sentenced to life imprisonment.  Hundreds have been arrested all over the state.

One of the districts with a large number of cases was Agra for obvious reasons.  Initially, the situation seemed to have been brought under control but soon cases started going up again and today the total number of cases stands at 900 with nine new cases on June 1 and 42 people have died.  Agra is not one of the districts receiving large numbers of migrants. 

The Agra example has now been exposed as one with many of the weaknesses that plague the health system in the state despite the fact that it boasts of a reputed medical college and relatively more health facilities.  Despite this, 64 Covid positive patients had to be shifted to the Etawah Medical College in April because of shortage of beds.  They were seen waiting outside the medical college there, mingling freely for more than two hours while arrangements were made to admit them.

Child rights activists allege that in April and May at least five children died due to lack of timely medical assistance: a 12 year old child died in May after six hospitals refused to treat him; an eight month old died after being refused treatment by three. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has issued notices to the district Magistrate after a six month old child died due to the unavailability of an ambulance and to the UP health department after two children were found carrying firewood in a discarded PPE suit which was one in a pile of many when they should have been destroyed because they are highly infectious and inflammable.  On May 29, a pregnant lady lost her child when she was denied medical care because the health center lacked surgical gloves.
More than 145 TB patients have died in Agra in this period because they were denied treatment.  Deaths are taking place because it is feared that the patients are suffering from Covid and also because they are suffering from a disease other than Covid.

The real Agra example exposes the tall claims made by the government on May 25 about the tremendous steps taken to boost health infrastructure all over the state.  Claims were made that all 75 districts now had ventilators.  The charts that accompanied the government statement, however, showed many districts without ventilators and next day, BJP Rajya Sabha member, Harnath Yadav,  castigated the Mainpuri administration for not having purchased a ventilator despite his having provided funds. 

While it is certainly commendable that CM Yogi has been consistently advocating the return of migrants and has even taken some steps to ensure this, the return of more than 25 lakh migrants in the last few weeks has created enormous challenges that the government is unable to meet despite its assurances to provide food, cash and employment along with safe quarantining to the returning workers.   

Many of those shown in horrific conditions depicting the misery and travails of migrants, belong to UP.  They have suffered enormously making the long journey home.  Even today, hundreds are packed into buses and other vehicles that they have hired or boarded on their own.  They are not beneficiaries of the government assurances and are arriving home in the most pathetic physical and mental condition from where they were taken in buses at government expense to their homes via the local bus depot.  Those who have been going regularly to Lucknow station with dry snacks and necessities for the migrants have said that all disembarking migrants are given a packed meal at the station before boarding the buses.  In Kanpur, however, the situation is different and because no meal is provided at the station, the migrants arrive hungry and thirsty at the bus depot where many organisations, most prominently trade unions have been providing nearly 2000 food packets every day. From June 1, however, the situation has further deteriorated and the migrants now have to pay the full bus fare which is proving to be an unbearable burden for many.

In early May, most of the returning migrants were taken to quarantine camps but this provision, inadequately implemented earlier, now seems to be collapsing.  From the beginning, the camps have been of uneven standards.  A media report of the quarantine center in Hardaspur village, Etawah district, being in an open field was confirmed by Mukut Singh, secretary of UP AIKS.  No food is provided by the government here and no one had received Rs 1000 that the government promised. In two quarantine centers in Chandauli district, it was found that the funds made available by the government to the panchayat for providing food for the migrants had run out quite early.  The premises were unsanitary and there were no facilities, not even beds.  In Fulauna gram panchayat, Sultanpur, only one of six gram sabhas, Kharsoma, has received Rs 40,000 from the government to feed those in quarantine and has already spent more than Rs 84,000.   In the entire state, only those with ration cards are being given free rations.  Those with Aadhaar cards are facing difficulties in getting ration cards made.  In the quarantine centers, testing is mostly not taking place.  In some places, temperature is being measured.  (Even in the major cities, while testing has been increased it is nowhere near the number required.)   Covid cases are spiking with the return of the migrants.

The promise made by the government to assure employment to all returning migrants has attracted the most attention but its implementation seems unlikely.  After the much publicised UP Summit earlier, new industries being set up in all 75 districts were promised but in a recent TV interview, the BJP MP from Badaun said categorically that no industry had come to that district and this seems to be the norm rather than an exception.  MNREGA seems to be the only method of providing employment.  According to the central government, April 2020 has seen a huge decrease in MNREGA work all over the country and, in UP, less than a lakh of workers had been given work under MNREGA.  The government has increased the number in May and wage arrears have been paid to many of the workers who are also getting free rations but the way in which the scheme is being implemented means that it will prove to  be tremendously inadequate to deal with burgeoning unemployment all around. The number of workdays permissible remains at 100 to a family and with more members of the family queuing up for work, the number of days per head is decreasing.  The deteriorating of the physical conditions of the workers means that they are unable to fulfill work norms and therefore will receive reduced wages (when the wage rate is Rs 222 per day).  The early onset of the monsoon will see tremendous disruption of MNREGA work which is still mostly confined to the digging of ditches.

Ominous clouds are gathering on the horizon in UP – destitution, unemployment, hunger deaths and suicides loom large.  The corona epidemic while it will continue to spike in the state may pale in comparison to even more life-threatening and endemic diseases.  Given its past history, the government’s response may take recourse to more authoritarian measures in the future which will only exacerbate the sufferings of the people.