The Governments must stop their machinery from harassing people they consider a thorn in the flesh

The COVID-19 surge has exposed the bitter social and economic divide that has existed in India for centuries and which still persists despite tall claims by the so-called stakeholders of our democracy. Some recent events in the pandemic era amply highlight this sad truth. The District Magistrate (DM) of West Tripura, Sailesh Kumar Jadav, is in the news for barging into a banquet hall and disrupting a wedding ceremony to enforce the COVID-19 protocol. The DM acted as a law unto himself, disregarding the fact that due permission had been taken to host the wedding. The errant official apologised only because the ruling party MLAs demanded his scalp after a public outcry. Shift to Bihar, and a Minister’s son holds a big fat wedding with hundreds of guests in attendance making a mockery of the strict guidelines issued to contain the surge of Coronavirus. The lack of sensitivity to the suffering of the common citizen also found a reflection in the way policemen reportedly snatched an oxygen cylinder from a person who kept pleading with the cops to let him take the cylinder to save his dying mother. There are myriad versions of the Agra story with the unifying theme that the cops snatched the cylinder from the wailing person who fell at their feet. Compare this to the treatment meted out to India’s powerful personalities who can walk into any hospital where beds are reserved for them and top doctors are in attendance round-the-clock to monitor their condition.

Reports that in certain States the police have been told to crack down on hospitals who report oxygen shortage to the media and to book people for seeking medical help on social media have triggered public outrage. We all know that despite all the cover-ups by different State Governments, the ground situation remains pretty grim. Blaming the whistleblowers, the media in this case, for highlighting anomalies in the number of deaths or shortage of hospital beds, oxygen cylinders and ventilators is not going to help. Rather, the Governments should be happy that the whistleblowers are exposing the loopholes in the system. In the process, if they commit a faux pas or two, it should be overlooked. The country must not be bogged down in settling petty political scores at a time when a tragedy of this magnitude has befallen us. It’s unwise to think that there is no crisis and the people are using social media only to spread unrest against the Government. What would you say about the SOS tweet posted by Union Minister Gen VK Singh seeking a hospital bed for his brother or, for that matter, his ministerial colleague Sanjiv Baliyan’s claim that doctors and medical staff are running away from hospitals? If the property of a “mischief-monger” can be confiscated over a “misleading” social media post in the name of creating panic, should not the Governments also face the music for making misleading claims about the condition of hospitals or availability of drugs/oxygen? Don’t forget: Accountability starts at the top, not from the bottom.