India's self-inflicted Covid disaster

India's struggle in dealing with the second wave of COVID-19 infections has made it into almost every major news portal in the world. Covid-19 is a pandemic. The entire world is battling with it. Many countries are struggling to deal with the unprecedented burden on their public health system. There are concerted efforts on every level and at on never seen before levels to revamp even well-functioning public health systems. In light of all this, India's struggle is a self-inflicted disaster. Many countries in South Asia, including India, got lucky during the first wave of COVID-19 infection. Countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Shri Lanka didn't get hit that bad or didn't feel any pressure on their already struggling public health systems. This should have given them an advantage and some extra time to prepare for a possible second wave. History (Spanish flu) suggests that most viral infections don't just come once, many of them come in multiple waves and some reoccur every year that too with the mutated virus. Somehow, this thought didn't cross the mind of policy and decision-makers in India, they declared victory over Corona and started as if the pandemic was over, at least for them. The biggest mistake one can make against a highly infectious virus is to allow large public gatherings and India did exactly this. Large religious congregations, state elections, local elections, massive election rallies, everything was allowed without any COVID protocols. How did an opportunistic virus, like COVID-19 miss such a golden opportunity, it did exactly what it is good at, it spread like wildfire across India. The second wave not only caught Indians unprepared but it also created a policy paralysis where the lack of coordination of the governments at the state and national level was exposed. The government did not even try to show that it was capable of handling the crisis. People turned to social media to get help from whatever sources they can. Most of the relief work was done on an individual level, help seekers turned to social media more than the government portals. Many people got infected even after taking precautions as it was impossible to stay away from infected people. Many lives that could have been saved were lost, due to lack of proper and timely medical care.

It is still a great puzzle why a country with the world's largest vaccine manufacturer and largest generic drug industry didn't stock enough vaccines and drugs for its own people. When the entire world was procuring vaccines and drugs from these manufacturers by investing money, collaborating with them, and placing advance orders with almost every vaccine inventor and maker, what the Indian government was doing? What is their rationale behind not going for aggressive vaccination even after knowing that the country's public health system is utterly not capable of taking the load from any pandemic? I don't know if Indians will bother to ask these questions to their respective public representative, somehow in India, such issues don't make a good topic for a political discussion. Politics is unusually focused on caste, religion, and national security. In India, Pakistan can be a bigger election topic than the deaths of thousands of Indians due to the government's mistake, sad but a reality. 

What's the lesson? First, listen to scientists, don't try to underscore the damage by shutting up voices that ask questions, no matter how uncomfortable to difficult those questions are. Second, provide public health institutions reliable data, freedom to share information, and some platform to discuss and communicate this information with world experts. By sharing and analyzing such data only one can come up with the best policy decision in any pandemic. No country is risk-free in a world pandemic, all need to fight it and help each other when needed. This is why when India needed help arrived from all over the world. Finally, ask for accountability. A disaster of such a magnitude cannot happen without failures at every level starting from the top. If Indians don't ask these questions, demand honest answers from respective authorities, and fix the accountability they are going to face the same problems and wonder what went wrong from one disaster to another.

Thanks for reading and please share your opinion about this topic. 

Chennai floods and story of unplanned development in Indian cities

The entire world watched the floods in Chennai on various news channels, the international coverage was not as prominent as it should have been but it was somewhere there in every news portal. Even most of the Indian media responded very late to report this natural calamity with the attention and sincerity it deserves. There can be various reasons for this lack of coverage in the Indian media, maybe they thought that useless debate on tolerance and intolerance going on in parliament was more important, or maybe they thought Chennai is not Mumbai or Delhi so not many people will be interested in that coverage, or maybe they had no clue that it was that serious, so we don't know what was the reason but national media was very late to show up on the scene, but finally they did show up. There were reports of severe damage to people's homes and other personal property, day-to-day lives of thousands of people were affected in a way they never imagined. Some scenarios were terrible and beyond imagination. My few relatives live in Chennai, and from them, I came to know how bad was the situation and how people managed to survive mostly by helping each other. In India, the government machinery is either unprepared for such a massive disaster or it gets crushed under the huge demand for help. There were also various stories of common people, celebrities, and rescue workers' heroics, and their brave acts during these moments of crises which managed to save many lives and helped many in distress. No doubt that these stories need to be highlighted, but they should not overshadow the real reasons behind this human-made natural disaster. 

We all saw what happened and how people were fighting to overcome the problems caused by this disaster, but we also need to ask the important question, why this happened, and who is to blame? We all know that we can not control rain, drought, or any other natural calamities like earthquakes or tsunamis, but we can take some preventive or precautionary measures to minimize the damage and reduce casualties. We need to be better prepared for such types of incidents so that they don't create havoc in people's lives. Then, why doesn't any government in India whether it is a state or central make it their priority? To understand why I am saying this please go and visit any growing city in India like Pune, Bengaluru, or any other city, and observe what is going on in the name of development. It is literally unplanned construction on a massive scale, people are building something on each and every vacant land legally or illegally. Not only builders but also common people, and various institutions are occupying each and every available piece of land and constructing something on it, it feels like these cities are on steroids as far as construction is concerned. Land prices are skyrocketing in each and every city, town, or village where even a little bit of wind of development has reached. People are selling and buying land and apartments like stocks in the stock market, prices fluctuate daily, there are land millionaires who became rich just because they had huge ancestral land which is worth more than they ever imagined. These things are good for the economy and people if they happen in a planned way, but there is absolutely no planning in all this, the real estate boom just happened and exploded. There was no pre-planning about how to design and sanction new constructions and no one was even interested in any such planning as the system is deeply corrupt and inefficient. Illegal construction is not a new problem for Indian cities, this has been going on for decades, and the real estate boom has just made it worse. However, the real issue is that no government wants to do anything about it, even after disasters there is no action to correct any mistakes, if at all, they play politics at the cost of suffering people. I lived in one such very crowded neighborhood of Pune for most of my life, so I know firsthand how these neighborhoods come into existence and grow without any legal planning and approval. They are so crowded that in many places even ambulances or firetrucks can't reach if there is any emergency, so, just imagine what might happen in case of flood or earthquake. The amazing part is all these neighborhoods originate and flourish right under the watch of government and elected members of the legislature of every political party, and there are no exceptions to this. These people and corresponding government departments purposely ignore this dangerous situation until it becomes an unmanageable humanitarian problem, there are thousands of colonies like these in each city of India. This is not development, but this is like having a ticking time bomb that is waiting to explode. 

Why so much unplanned development is allowed when they could develop a city with proper planning? Two main reasons come to my mind. The first reason is the pressure of the growing population in cities, people migrate in large numbers to cities in search of better living, migration happens especially from northern states of India to cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune,, Chennai, and many others where there are better job opportunities for unskilled labor. The second reason is rampant corruption in government offices and political parties that encourage such illegal settlements. Illegal construction is massive in all these cities and the government knows right from the time when it starts. There are colonies where thousands of people live with hundreds of homes, all of them constructed illegally. People already occupied dry lakes, shrunken river beds, hills, and canals, even they covered up drainage lines and built their residence on top of it. Whenever there is a significant amount of rainfall there is no proper drainage for that water to go. It has to flood neighborhoods, enter people's homes, and damage their properties. Does anyone know how to manage this mess? Can we just blame excess rain for this problem? This water has nowhere to go as all its natural paths are blocked by massive construction by this so-called development. We saw this happening in Mumbai, Delhi, and now in Chennai, but did we ever bother to take any steps to correct these mistakes? Did we ask ourselves why this is happening so frequently in major cities? Is nature screwing us up or we are paying the price for screwing up nature? Unless and until we ask these questions we are not going to find any solution to these problems. Next time it might be some different city or state, but the same scenario of destruction and loss of life will be repeated.

Thankfully natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, or hurricanes don't strike us every day or every year, but that doesn't mean we should not be cautious or prepared for them. Because when they strike and we are not prepared, then the loss is catastrophic, and tragedy is humongous. We can not control the occurrence of rain or earthquakes, but we can definitely prepare ourselves to minimize their impact. I hope these floods initiate some discussion about the need for planned development in Indian cities. I hope people and governments don't forget this tragedy and move on without taking any corrective measures. I hope other growing cities learn from this and plan accordingly. If nothing changes, then we all are waiting for another Chennai to happen and I don't think any of us want to witness this again.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Links:
1. Actor Siddarth's amazing efforts with his team to carry out relief work in affected areas.
2. आखिर चेन्नई में बारिश से बाढ़ क्यों?