PM Modi has been able to motivate majority of
the population to practice safe conduct. But the challenge facing him as
he works round the clock to ensure that India recovers from Corona
outbreak, is to jolt the governance system to provide a policy ecosystem
needed for double digit growth.
The world is facing a double shock of
World War proportions, to both the health of the population as well as
its economic prospects. Entire sectors of the economy have been shut
down in an effort to save what could be millions of lives. Almost every
family has been affected by the Covid-19 earthquake that first began in
the final six weeks of 2019 in Wuhan, a city in China of 11 million
people.
The
tragedy is not simply the disease and the outbreak followed by epidemic
followed by pandemic that has occurred since its appearance in a "live
animals for food" market in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. The
tragedy is not simply that it took six weeks for authorities in the
province to accept the view of a few perceptive doctors and researchers
there that the new disease that they were treating could develop into a
catastrophe of unimaginable proportions unless contained early.
Instead
of heeding the whistleblowers, they were condemned as "anti-national"
and the most perceptive, Wenliang Li, was forced by the police to recant
in 2020, the way Pope Urban VIII forced Galileo Galilei in 1663 to
recant his discovery that the earth revolved around the sun rather than
the other way around. Those in Wuhan who acted against the doctor rather
than the virus at a time when it could have been contained within a
small perimeter are guilty of the mass murder of at least 15,000 victims
of Covid-19 ( a figure that could reach into the millions) and the
shutdown of the global economy consequent to the emergence of the
pandemic.
Throughout
January, when it was clear that the highly infectious killer novel
coronavirus was on the loose, not even in China was the alarm sounded
with sufficient force. Searches for the virus on Baidu were muted until
January 23, 2020, soon after Chinese Communist Party General Secretary
Xi Jinping assumed direct control of the fightback and sealed off Wuhan
from the rest of the country. Interestingly, although searches on Baidu
( mostly within China) were low in number throughout the period leading
up to the lockdown, Google searches from the rest of the world were
rising.
Another
reason why Covid-19 formed and subsequently grew into a pandemic was
the fact that markets offering live birds,animals, mammals and sea
species of different kinds continued to function throughout China
despite the 2003 SARS epidemic demonstrating the danger of allowing such
retail commerce. Several studies conducted by Chinese experts warned of
the risk to public health caused by such trade, but the extensive
machinery of the Communist Party and the state run by it failed to pay
heed and bring such activities to a halt. This led towards the close of
2019 to the global calamity that emerged in the winter of last year from
the "live food" market in Wuhan.
In
the absence of a clear indication of the extreme seriousness of the
situation from either the Chinese government or the World Health
Organisation, governments across the world hesitated to take action. In
the UK or Italy, for example, flights from and to Wuhan were allowed to
land and take off even while India had shut its airports to all traffic
from and to China. The impression even within the US was that the
outbreak would be contained even within China, and that the risk to the
rest of the world was negligible, a misreading of the situation that
shows the incompetence of US agencies in ascertaining what the factual
conditions in China actually were. The major powers believed that
Chinese authorities would rapidly bring the situation under control and
not allow it to spread. Such action finally took place during the second
half of January, but not until CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping
directly intervened to lead the fight against a virus that by that stage
threatened to drag China into an economic quagmire and a public health
nightmare.
Once
the crisis became obvious, among the first of world leaders to act was
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who barred entry of visitors from China,
following the examples of Taiwan and Singapore. Should India escape an
elevated curve for community transmission or Stage III of the Covid-19
outbreak, the credit will go to Modi for his unprecedented action in
first blocking access to India from China and thereafter wisely
extending visa cancellations to Europe, at a time when it was not yet
certain that the European Union had become the epicentre of a health
emergency that was coming under control in China.
Subsequently,
the rest of the world was cut off from India. On March 19, Prime
Minister Modi gave a historic call for an all-day "Janata Curfew" a few
days later, a measure designed to break the chain of human-to-human
transmission of the novel coronavirus. Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
assisted by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Heath Minister
Harsh Vardhan have initiated multiple steps to protect the 1.29 billion
people of India from going the Iran or Italy way during the present
pandemic. If only authorities in Hubei had heeded Dr Wenliang Li rather
than persecuted him, both China as well as the rest of the world would
have been spared the situation that is now deluging the world. If only
the rest of the world had been alerted to the immensity of the crisis by
January 1, 2020 rather than only after the sealing off of Wuhan was
announced on January 23, the global economy would not have been as close
to the ICU that it is now, and countless may have been saved.
The
Covid-19 pandemic shows the importance of transmitting bad news up the
administrative ladder at speed, especially in governance systems where
only good news gets moved upwards while bad news gets suppressed, as the
novel coronavirus outbreak in Hubei initially was for six precious
weeks after its toxicity and incurable nature was accepted by Hubei
authorities in mid-November, reaching the highest levels of the Chinese
system residing in Beijing only by 27 December, 2019. It took a further
three weeks before President Xi decided to directly intervene and order
unprecedented steps which jolted the world out of its complacency. Nine
weeks that have shaken the world. Nine weeks during which action could
have been taken to ensure that the deep,dark pit that first China,then
Europe, and now the US and others in the global community have fallen
into could have been avoided.
The
contrasting examples of China in 2019 and India in 2018 show what a
difference a quick and effective response to a disease makes. Like
Covid-19, the Nipah virus that struck Kerala on May 2,2018 originated in
the bat population. In coordination with the National Institute of
Virology in Pune and the Manipal Institute of Virology, the Kerala state
government immediately placed more than 2300 individuals in the
districts of Malappuram and Kozhikode in quarantine, and imported a drug
from Australia that had not yet completed testing for general use.
After confirming that the outbreak was a potential health hazard, the
state government issued an advisory on May 23 and joined hands with the
central government to access what knowledge about the disease (which is
fatal in almost 90% of cases) was available globally. Useful information
was secured from Malaysia, especially relating to treatment, that
ensured the saving of a two patients, while 17 died. The Nipah outbreak
was officially declared over on 10 June, less than six weeks after the
first case was identified in the Government Medical College, Kozhikode.
A
disease which could have killed tens of thousands was eliminated in a
short time because of close coordination between the central and state
government, as well as the work done on detection and containment by the
National Institute of Virology at Pune and the Manipal Institute of
Virology. The difference six weeks can make is readily seen in the case
of the Covid-19 pandemic that is sweeping the globe. Had the authorities
in Hubei province in the Peoples Republic of China responded in the
manner that was seen in India when the Nipah outbreak occurred, Covid-19
could have been contained within a few locations in the province and
considerable death and suffering avoided.
Should
India escape an elevated curve for community transmission of the
Covid-19 outbreak, the credit will go to Modi for his unprecedented
action in first blocking access to India from China and thereafter
wisely extending visa cancellations to Europe.
As
mentioned, when a doctor in Wuhan warned that a new virus was on the
loose and needed to be eliminated quickly, rather than act upon his
suggestion, the provincial authorities labelled him as "anti-state" and
forced him to write a confession that he was nothing but an alarmist.
This while the novel coronavirus was spreading like a blaze among the
people during the final weeks of 2019. It was only in the very close of
that year when provincial authorities conveyed the depth of the problem
to the leadership in Beijing. By that time, several million people had
left Hubei and gone to other parts of China as well as abroad. Several
of them were carriers, many rendered more deadly because they themselves
had no symptoms of the disease that they were passing on to any
individual who came in contact with them or with any surface touched by
them.
Unlike
the case of Kerala government which alerted the central government as
soon as the first case of Nipah was detected, Chinese provincial
authorities continued to believe that the infection could be localised,
and that they could handle it o their own. By their hesitation in
conveying bad news to a higher - indeed, the highest - level of the
Chinese governance system, these officials have caused a global
disaster. After getting information of the outbreak of this new disease,
it took a further three weeks for the central authorities to sound the
alarm globally. Only by the close of January 2020, after President Xi
Jinping took the unprecedented step of closing off an entire city of 11
million and a province from the rest of the country did governments
across the world realize that they were facing a public health disaster.
Some responded swiftly - including India and Singapore - while others
such as Italy and France failed to understand the danger to their own
public.
First
Singapore and then India under the leadership of Prime Minister
Narendra Modi shut the entry door to visitors from China. Later, when it
became clear that Europe was badly infected with Covid-19, visitors
from across Europe were blocked from coming to India. Unfortunately,
several foreign tourists were already in the country, while later on,
Indian citizens who had been visiting Europe returned. Some within these
two groups brought with them the novel coronavirus. Coordinated action
by the PMO, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Health Ministry
ensured that community spread was prevented, at least till the time of
writing this report. Should India escape the ravages of Stage III (
community spread) or have a very shallow curve of such infections, it
would go as mentioned earlier to the credit of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, who has been assisted by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar
and Union Health Minister Harshvardhan.
From
the start, they understood the depth of the calamity that could befall
India were the most extreme action not taken, action that they ( with
the assistance of the Indian Council for Medical Research) took from the
very start of the period when they first were made aware of the depths
of the crisis through the Wuhan lockdown. Avoiding the worst would also
go to the credit of the people of India, for Covid-19 can only be
eliminated by a community effort involving every citizen. Just as a
single thread can unravel a fabric, a single individual can put to
naught efforts at containing Covid-19. The call for social distancing
given by the Prime Minister on March 19 needs to be obeyed by the entire
population, so that India escapes the ravages of the disease in a
manner that Italy or Iran have been unable to do because social
distancing was not taken seriously by their populations in time.
By
contrast, in India Prime Minister Modi has been able to motivate the
overwhelming majority of the population to practice safe conduct,
although there remain a few citizens who are irresponsible enough to
risk calamity for other citizens and the economy through flouting the
few simple rules needed to protect both themselves as well as the nation
from the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
That
the Government of India has had to rely even during the Covid-19
epidemic on a law that was first brought into effect in 1897 shows the
need to ensure that the overwhelmingly colonial-era system of laws and
regulations still faithfully adhered to by the governance mechanism
needs to change. The Indian Penal Code has to reflect not 19th century
but 21st century values and needs. The new structure should reflect the
importance of involving Civil Society in the processes of governance
through formal methods of consultation and monitoring, rather than
concentrating such authority solely in the Civil Service.
Freedoms
taken away by the addition of the First Amendment to the Constitution
of India should be restored, while the legal system needs to deliver
transparent justice ( including through live streaming of all court
proceedings) that takes decreed within a time frame that is closer to
that of other major economies. An audit needs to be conducted by an
independent authority of the economic and financial effects of court
judgments, many of which lead to substantial consequences,including the
shutting down of several industrial units. Such an audit is also called
for where the National Green Tribunal is concerned. India must certainly
be as green and as filled with sustainability as possible, but this
must be in a manner that takes into account the needs of the human
population for income and employment, the foundation for a good life.
Several
NGOs recommend measures that assume that human beings have no right to
rights and that decisions should be taken irrespective of the human
cost, as for example in the forced closing of large units rather than
making them adopt clean technologies and continue operations. A table
showing the number of cases as well as the time taken for disposal by
each member of the Bench needs to be prepared for courts and placed
online. The country has been waiting for decades for a Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court who would ensure that the judicial reforms needed for
transparency and accountability within this very powerful Estate of the
State get carried out, and hopefully such reforms will not long remain
unfulfilled. India has an exceptionally qualified judiciary, and as such
it is reasonable to believe that such necessary reforms are not an
impossibility but can become a reality that reinforces public confidence
in the judiciary.
While
the public health effects of the Covid-19 epidemic are being
energetically tackled by the Modi government, what is as important is
the health of the economy. A three month moratorium on loan repayments
and interest payments both in the case of private moneylender loans and
those of the banking system need to be enforced, so as to ensure that a
flood of NPAs and bankruptcies do not get caused by circumstances beyond
the control of the financial and economic victims of the 2020 public
health emergency.
Chancellor
Rishi Sunak of the UK has put in place a scheme to ensure that 80% of
the salaries of workers get paid by the state, so that layoffs are
minimised. Retraining workers and restarting businesses from scratch are
very difficult, and a similar scheme needs to be carried out in India
for workers and employees. Compensation can be paid for salaries upto a
maximum of Rs 10 lakhs per person annualised, so that businesses do not
retrench citizens during these months of Covid-19 stress. Former Finance
Minister P Chdambaram has evidently never travelled to Europe in his
life, for he kept on telling taxpayers that the rate of tax was the same
as in several countries in the EU. Chidambaram was clearly unaware of
the many benefits that citizens in those parts of the world get from the
state. In India, even the poor pawn their gold jewellery to avoid
public hospitals and schools, not to talk of the average taxpayer.
Chidambaram clearly believes that government schools, hospitals and
other services are at the same level as in the EU, and may be they are
for a VVIP like him, but not for 99.9 per cent of the citizens of India.
There
has long been need for direct and indirect tax reform as well as an
overhaul of a regulatory structure that strangulates industry and trade
while doing nothing to end endemic corruption, as for example through
using corrupt officials to hound innovators in India so that
alternatives to what they have discovered may get imported. It is not an
accident that India is dependent on imports for so many critical items,
and the answer lies in the obstacles placed on domestic producers in
order to clear the way for imports.
The
Covid-19 epidemic is a crisis that needs to jolt the governance system
into making itself such as to give the people of India the policy
ecosystem needed for double digit growth. That is the challenge facing
Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he works round the clock to ensure that
India recovers from a fever that has travelled from Wuhan to all parts
of the world.
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