The India COVID Mess Up : Needs for an Urgent correction

    India is now a World COVID hotspot. How fast situation reverses, just few months back it seems that India is on top of chart to manage COVID wave one but suddenly a Global problem when Covid wave 2 hit India. But not that we are unaware of it but we allowed this Covid Tsunami to engulf the entire country.

    The political leadership which took decision so early in COVID one when death was so less but this time devoted full time to elections and more particularly to West Bengal elections. It looks that the only national agenda is to dethrone Mamata Banerjee. The full state powers were behind it. But what happens at last Didi -O -Didi  failed miserably and TMC back to power in West Bengal. It was a double whammy for BJP losing the West Bengal and also allowing the COVID wave to engulf the country.

We failed at almost all steps.

Starting from taking the mutation of COVID lightly and also not taking seriously the warning of covid 2 in India that started coming from early February. We become complacent.

In fact, we have ignored the COVID 2 warning and in the last one year did nothing substantially on the front of improving medical infra and creating additional beds. In fact, the additional beds created during phase one was also not kept in working condition. It was a colossal failure on all fronts by the government.

The COVID vaccine policy was faulty from day one. It started with above sixty ignoring the super spreader who travel and carry this to different places. The first recipient of vaccine should be the persons at airport, train station and bus stations. There was no cluster approach. It was thrown out to entire country very thinly putting people not vaccinated in that area under great danger to get the virus. And exactly this is happening.

The central government was busy in earning brownie points by exporting vaccine to other countries on one hand and delaying entry of vaccines from other countries. Still after close to four months the vaccine given in India is less than its export. 

Oxygen supply was a typical example of failure of supply chain nothing else.

The hoarders, small hospitals and ambulance provider extorting money from general pubic. Putting a 15 minutes oxygen and charging 5000 and for 6 feet by 4 feet cubicle isolation the charges were 15000 to 25000. Ambulances charging 10000 to 15000 for 5 to 10 km distance. The situation was so pathetic that the people were left to themselves only. Chaos was so high and there was no monitoring and oversight from government. In front of all big hospitals hundreds of persons in auto, car, ambulances with Oxygen waiting on road side for the bed in a hospital. It was a pathetic scene.

They left people to the mercy of unknown. 

The remdesivir and faviflu prices were sky rocketing and sold in black.

All of this have been averted and lakhs of life would have been saved if the elections to five states were postponed and the government should whole heartedly work for the covid management. The damage has been done to the people psyche and the confidence of nation has been shaken.

 Kumbh were allowed in the thick of high Covid transmission.

But who is responsible? The courts are casual and government is nowhere.

What pains at the moment is that still central government has no plan to contain it? Whether to debate national lock down for some time, reviewing vaccination policy, correcting oxygen supply chain, checking black marketing of essential covid drugs, overcharging hospitals and ambulances and allowing fast track approval for all vaccines in India.

This COVID second phase has hit the very back bone of the self-sufficiency of India and the hollow promise of government.

India needs to vaccinate its minimum 70 crore citizen in next 2-3 months otherwise the ongoing covid tsunami couple with a bleak chance of COVID wave 3 may hit us badly again in October -November.

The phone numbers and contacts on social media for medicines, oxygen, ambulance, hospital beds etc are all non-responsive. There is a trust deficit. There is no credible information on which you can rely. It is business as usual for them with no empathy.

The country is used to it and we were in an illusion for a brief time that there is a strong government at centre who cares for the country and its people. But it is all now fully exposed. The BJP is only interested and working to add non-BJP states to their fold and that is their prime agenda.

The human relations also taken a severe toll. People are traumatized and fearful and not even venturing out to support and help their family and neighbor in most critical times. They are all worried about their own life. The humanity took a biggest toll. At crematorium even finding four persons to support for last rites are so hard to see. The minimum dignity to those who are on onward journey has been totally denied. The dream of their life time was denied for a respectable exit from this world. We are slowly turning in to a dead community and dead society. 

But in this hour of hardship and panic the only comforting and soothing is to see the medical fraternity, how they are devoting their time and skills to save people, they are working overtime, worn out, stressed out, but without any complain serving the patients, without fear of losing their life. That is the most emotional and sentimental part of the Covid response in India. 

We still have time left to control it. The government should wake up, they can still try for West Bengal in 2026, Modi Jee should trim his beard in the sorrow of lakhs who left us during this period and focus only on containing this menace. The spiritual face of the head of state needs to be changed to working head of state with work at hand.

The hardest part to swallow is that this government has ability to contain it but focused somewhere else to get the situation out of hand.

Act fast otherwise nation and its people will never forgive the people at power which  has all means to stop it.