Neha Azmi
India has reported its biggest single-day spike in coronavirus cases, adding 11,458 confirmed infections and taking the its total count to more than 309,000, according to data from the federal health ministry, India now is the fourth-worst affected country in the world, having surpassed the United Kingdom on Friday, with cases steadily increasingly despite a nationwide lockdown that began in late March and has since been loosened.
Reuters reported that India has 145,779 active cases, and has recorded 8,884 deaths.
It will not be a surprise for most of us to note that India’s Lockdown has been a failure in comparison to other countries like Germany, Italy, UK and Spain.
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The same was shared by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on twitter. The opposition leader emphasized his point through a graph comparison which clearly demonstrated how India in comparison to other countries has been unable to curb the virus as it’s spreading like wildfire since 1st June, which is when the Lockdown was relaxed.
Countries like Germany Italy UK and Spain showed a sharp decline in the number of patients contracting the virus after the lockdown, unlike India which recorded single-day jump of 9,851 coronavirus cases and 273 deaths on Friday, pushing the nationwide infection tally to 2,26,770 and the death toll to 6,348, according to the Union health ministry.
It should be noted that India’s lockdown, one of the harshest in the world failed because of the government’s unpreparedness to deal with a world pandemic of this scale in a Third World country which was already reeling under the shock of a failed economy.
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The Indian government enforced the Lockdown without seeking scientific inputs from a national task force constituted to advise the central government on its pandemic response. The lockdown had failed to achieve its purpose due to the government’s failure to take crucial parallel measures, such as developing India’s testing capacity and medical infrastructure.
Countries like China and Italy had been able to beat it, not entirely because of shutting down the country but also by implementing adequate measures of regular testing and isolation measures. India failed to conduct comprehensive contact tracing, did little to scale up testing, and its failure to prepare its medical infrastructure, all of which contributed for the spike in cases all over the country.
Tavare Alam- A Victim Among Lakhs of Indians
India’s suffering has not just been confined to the physical health of its people. It suffered humanly in every possible way that there is to suffer. A country where the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer, the most catastrophic affect the sudden lockdown brought on was on its population who live below the poverty line. The vast majority among them are the migrant workers, who from the rural areas flock for work and income in the urban areas of the country.
May by the Indian Government wants the people of India to forget, the humanitarian crisis and their failures, under the garb of an old used technique, of ‘National Security’, but their crimes, the deaths of poor, treating them as sub-class humans is something India needs to remember. Amid the lockdown, tens of thousands of poor migrant workers went jobless and struggled for food, basic necessities and means of transport to return back to their native villages. With no help initially from the government, many took it in their own stride to complete this journey to their hometown on foot.
One such plight of the several helpless migrants that went viral on various social media platforms was that of an 11-year-old migrant worker Tavare Alam who was seen travelling in a rickshaw cart from Varansi in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, to their home in the Arariya district in Bihar which is a distance of nearly 550kms.
He said, they had no food or means of income, due to the lockdown. Alam said that his father is the one who usually cycles the cart but when he gets tired, Alam gives his father a break and rides the rickshaw himself. He will take days to complete the exhausting journey.
Others suffered worse fate compared to Alam as they did not even have the cycle rickshaw to embark on their journey. Many people died due to hunger. Children died in front of their helpless parents. People poured their outcry and anger on the government’s indifference to the plight of the poor on social media.
The huge outcry from its educated internet savvy citizens forced the government to arrange special shramik trains to help the migrants reach their home. Many deaths were reported across the country from the Railway Stations because of delayed journey in the harsh weather conditions. There was no arrangements for food and water for the travellers on these trains.
One such instance of a toddler’s vain attempt to wake up his dead mother from eternal sleep on a railway platform in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur presented the most poignant picture of the massive migrant tragedy unfolding across several states.
Sufferings Irrespective of Region and Class
The urban population suffered no less. The majority of the people toil day and night to survive in this country. With everything coming to a standstill suddenly, the mere survival became a nightmare. People exhausted their savings, became dependent on aid and support from the generous enough among them. People lost their jobs, were sacked from big multinational companies. A number of companies, including cab aggregator OLA, Uber, Food delivery services Swiggy and Zomato, and some media firms have fired employees.
The 5 star luxury hotel Hyatt Regency threatened its employees to resign or face termination. The employees are continuously harassed by the HR team till they resign themselves to maintain the humanitarian image of the luxury hotel.
The middle class are loosing jobs and their children are loosing their right to study. Schools have not minimise the exorbitant fees in spite of no classes in progress. They could have provided some relief by cutting down the exorbitant amount to a minimum. With no source of steady income, parents have no option but to disenroll their child.
It would not be wrong to attribute India’s lockdown failure entirely to poor administration. The government’s ignorance of a proper medical strategy to combat the spread of the disease and the lack of empathy towards its citizens only aggravated the sufferings of the whole country.