Pranam
Hoarding is an act of vysya who is greedy to earn limitless;
politicians in general are so; Why Modi should hoard?; Reliance, TATA and
multi millionaires had contributed in triple digit crores to nation for
the purchase of covid drugs; only Lallu, stalin, Rahul etc had not shed
even a single pie either from India or from Swiss sorry Caribbean Islands.
KR IRS 29421
On Thu, 29 Apr 2021 at 07:46, Rangarajan T.N.C. <[email protected]>
wrote:
> India Is What Happens When Rich People Do Nothing
>
> The chamber of horrors the country now finds itself in was not caused by
> any one man, or any single government.
> April 27, 2021
>
> This month, Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, India’s capital
> and home to millions, tweeted that the city was facing an “acute shortage”
> of medical oxygen. The message was illuminating on a number of levels:
> First, his resorting to social media, rather than working through official
> channels, points to a lack of confidence in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
> government (though this is also at least partly because Kejriwal does not
> belong to Modi’s party); second, Kejriwal’s tweet emphasizes how Twitter
> has become a principal
> <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/22/covidsos-indian-twitter-becomes-a-platform-of-hope-amid-despair>
> means
> <https://www.bloombergquint.com/coronavirus-outbreak/hope-and-heartbreak-on-indian-covid-twitter>
> by
> which Indians appeal for help.
>
> Individual tales of people finding oxygen or a hospital bed via Twitter
> cannot hide the reality: There will soon be no beds left. Medicines are
> running out. There aren’t enough ambulances to carry the sick to get care,
> nor are there enough vans to carry the dead to graveyards. There aren’t
> even enough graveyards, nor enough wood to burn the necessary pyres.
>
> Laying the blame for India’s coronavirus disaster—hundreds of thousands of
> new cases and thousands of deaths each day, both of which are certainly a
> huge underestimate—at Modi’s feet would be easy. Certainly, much can be
> attributed to his government: After the virus landed on India’s shores, he
> imposed a brutal shutdown—one that largely hurt the poorest and most
> vulnerable—without consulting the nation’s top scientists
> <https://caravanmagazine.in/government/modi-administration-did-not-consult-icmr-appointed-covid-task-force-before-key-decisions>,
> yet did not use the time to build up the country’s health-care
> infrastructure; his administration offered little in the way of support for
> those who lost their job or income as a result of restrictions; and rather
> than taking advantage of low case counts in prior months, his government
> offered an air of triumphalism, allowing enormous Hindu religious
> festivals
> <https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-millions-of-indians-travel-to-celebrate-maha-kumbh-mela-despite-rising-coronavirus-rates-12273435>
> and crowded sporting competitions
> <https://www.livemint.com/sports/cricket-news/india-vs-england-t20i-no-spectators-at-remaining-three-matches-in-ahmedabad-11615831607633.html>
> to
> go ahead. Modi’s ruling Hindu-nationalist party has been accused of
> <https://www.freepressjournal.in/mumbai/mumbai-aap-demands-action-against-bjp-for-allegedly-indulging-in-hoarding-of-remdesivir-and-illegal-charity>
> hoarding
> <https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/maharashtra-government-vs-bjp-over-remdesivir-hoarding-2416341>
> lifesaving
> drugs, and has held mass election rallies
> <https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-modi-scorned-over-reckless-rallies-religious-gathering-amid-virus-mayhem-2021-04-19/>
> cum
> super-spreader events that would make Donald Trump blush. (This is to say
> nothing of how the authorities have used the pandemic to invoke a
> draconian
> <https://caravanmagazine.in/perspectives/colonial-character-of-the-modi-governments-actions-during-the-pandemic>
> colonial-era
> <https://qz.com/india/1820143/india-battles-coronavirus-with-british-era-epidemic-diseases-act/>
> law
> to restrict freedoms, while Modi’s government has at various points blamed
> minority groups
> <https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/4/18/how-the-coronavirus-outbreak-in-india-was-blamed-on-muslims>
> for
> outbreaks, arrested questioning journalists
> <https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/31/india-arrests-50-journalists-in-clampdown-on-critics-of-covid-19-response>,
> and, most recently, demanded
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/25/business/india-covid19-twitter-facebook.html>
> that
> social-media platforms including Facebook and Twitter delete posts critical
> of the authorities, ostensibly as part of the fight against the virus.)
>
> India’s experience of the pandemic will be defined by this enormous second
> wave. But the chamber of horrors the country now finds itself in was not
> caused by any one man, or any single government. It is the greatest moral
> failure of our generation.
>
> India may be classified as a developing or middle-income country, and by
> international standards, it does not spend enough on the health of its
> people. Yet this masks many of India’s strengths in the health-care sector:
> Our doctors are among the best trained on the planet, and as is well known
> by now, our country is a pharmacy for the world, thanks to an industry
> built around making cost-effective medicines and vaccines.
>
> What is evident, however, is that we suffer from moral malnutrition—none
> of us more so than the rich, the upper class, the upper caste of India. And
> nowhere is this more evident than in the health-care sector.
>
> India’s economic liberalization in the ’90s brought with it a rapid
> expansion of the private health-care industry, a shift that ultimately
> created a system of medical apartheid
> <https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/many-probes-few-answers/article19547461.ece>:
> World-class private hospitals catered to wealthy Indians and medical
> tourists from abroad; state-run facilities were for the poor. Those with
> money were able to purchase the best available care (or, in the case of the
> absolute richest, flee to safety
> <https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/indias-super-rich-beat-deadline-land-in-uk-in-private-jets/articleshow/82248975.cms>
> in
> private jets), while elsewhere the country’s health-care infrastructure was
> held together with duct tape. The Indians who bought their way to a
> healthier life did not, or chose not to, see the widening gulf. Today, they
> are clutching their pearls as their loved ones fail to get ambulances,
> doctors, medicine, and oxygen.
>
> I have covered health and science for nearly 20 years, including as the
> health editor for *The Hindu*, a major Indian newspaper. That time has
> taught me that there is no shortcut to public health, no opting out from
> it. Now the rich sit alongside the poor, facing a reckoning that had only
> ever plagued the vulnerable in India.
>
> Averting our gaze from the tragedies surrounding us, remaining divorced
> from reality, in our little bubbles, are political and moral choices. We
> have been willfully unaware of the ricketiness of our health-care system.
> The collective well-being of our nation depends on us showing solidarity
> with and compassion toward one another. No one is safe until everyone is.
>
> Our actions compound, one small act at a time—not pressing for greater
> attention to the vulnerable, because we are safe; not demanding better
> hospitals for all Indians, because we can afford excellent health care;
> assuming we can seal ourselves off from our country’s failings toward our
> compatriots.
>
> A prior Indian tragedy shows the shortcomings of that approach.
>
> Shortly after midnight on December 3, 1984, in the central Indian city of
> Bhopal, a tank in a pesticide factory leaked, releasing methyl isocyanate
> into the night sky. What would unfold in the following hours, days, weeks,
> months, and years was the world’s worst industrial disaster.
>
> Officially, the Indian government says that 5,295 people died
> overall—others put the death toll far higher—and hundreds of thousands
> suffered chemical poisoning. The run-up to and the immediate aftermath of
> the incident were chaotic: The company that owned the plant had not kept
> its security and safety precautions up to date, and locals and medical
> professionals in the area were not aware of how to protect themselves.
>
> Over time, toxic pollution from the plant contaminated the soil and
> groundwater around the site, resulting
> <https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/the-worlds-worst-industrial-disaster-is-still-unfolding/560726/>
> in
> higher-than-average rates of cancer, birth defects, and respiratory
> disorders. The area is still a toxic mess. The company, the local and state
> government, and India’s federal authorities have all consistently blamed
> one another. The deaths began decades ago, yet the suffering continues now.
>
> I moved to Bhopal after the leak and grew up there, a city filled with
> people carrying the intergenerational cost of what is now known simply as
> “the gas tragedy.” Outside Bhopal, many Indians do not recall the city
> beyond a vague sense of some long-forgotten disaster. The gas tragedy is a
> faraway one to them, consigned to history. But living in Bhopal, and seeing
> the impact the leak had, I learned early in life that monumental failures,
> like monumental successes, are collaborative efforts, involving both the
> actions people take and the signs they ignore.
>
> Many things went wrong then, and many people were responsible: Safety
> systems that could have slowed down or partially contained the leak were
> all out of operation at the time of the accident; gauges measuring
> temperature and pressure in various parts of the plant, including the
> crucial gas-storage tanks, were so notoriously unreliable that workers
> ignored early signs of trouble; the cooling unit—necessary to keep
> chemicals at low temperatures—had been shut off; the flare tower, designed
> to burn off methyl isocyanate escaping from the gas scrubber, required new
> piping.
>
> What has happened since is perhaps more instructive. Indians have by and
> large forgotten the tragedy. The people of Bhopal have been left to deal
> with its fallout. Richer Indians have never had to visit the city, so they
> have ignored it. Yet their apathy signals a choice, a decision to look the
> other way as their fellow Indians suffer.
>
> The photojournalist Sanjeev Gupta, a native of the city, has spent years
> documenting the aftermath of the disaster. Every so often, when media
> attention returns to Bhopal because of a new chapter in the long-running
> legal drama, his photos are typically the ones that grace the news reports.
> According to Gupta, the mass pyres now burning in Bhopal’s crematoriums as
> a result of coronavirus deaths are worse than anything he saw in 1984.
>
> However inadvertently, we built the system that is failing us. Perhaps the
> COVID-19 crisis will teach us, as the gas tragedy should have taught us,
> that our decisions—to stay silent as others suffer—have consequences.
>
>
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Thatha_Patty" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CAL5XZoqP%3DzJ73zS3-JtsuRmgV7uw3esiVOHryyLT%2BV_bk46djQ%40mail.gmail.com.
