Flip-flop governance!

I wrote about the Corona pandemic in March 2021 with an  underlying theme in the programme that India had done well, or at least much better than other big countries, and we should be OK with some feel good without being sheepish about it; I did add that it was not the time to drop our guard so the second wave was subdued quickly. I was way out of line:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5rjvGJmMQs 

And we were hit by unprecedented misery all around,  it gradually dawned that the situation got out of hand largely due to smug mismanagement by government(s). Nobody could see the ferocity of what was coming but my point was that had the machinery, the mandate and they should have known and acted. Government(s) must know, perceive, discern, learn and act. Our government(s) did not: 

http://anindecisiveindian.blogspot.com/2021/04/i-didnt-tell-you-sobut-you-ought-to.html

I recently made amends, if amend were possible, through my programme on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0vCuOeY8x4

Now, in this blog I have attempted some more. Throughout this blog I have written government(s) instead of government because while the onus rested squarely on the central government, state governments have also not covered themselves in any glory. Nevertheless, as the governments blew hot and cold, we have gone through a colossal disaster but hopefully the worst is over. Post a million miseries, a sense of reluctant relief is palpable. In terms of statistics:

Reams have written and a trillion words spoken about the apathy and dereliction by the government(s) and a lot in the defence of the government(s) as well. The defence is generally on familiarly weak lines, basing it on comparing India’s population with New Zealand and Singapore, politics by some states over vaccination, the second wave taking everyone by surprise and son; not even worth wasting our time on. The criticism, or rather the castigation centres around:

Pandemic come in waves, as history of the Spanish Flu tells us. Why go that far, what happened in European countries and United States should have served as good warning to the government as people behave as they do. The government behaved even worse than people were likely to, busying itself in priggish declaration of success in containing the disease, arrogating to itself credit for what was a characteristic decline in infections.

Strengthening of hospital infra, a lot of which was actually done in April and May as infections peaked, was well within the capability of the government(s) but nothing substantial was done leading to avoidable casualties as cases mounted exponentially. Similarly, it is shameful that one of the largest producers of Oxygen in the world could not make Oxygen available to hospitals and so many died gasping for breath. To rub salt in the open wounds, even in the middle of all this agony, you had the government(s) indulging in hype, like carriage of three Oxygen tanker trucks to Lucknow in a train which was not enough for a day and in any case, this transportation would have been quicker had the trucks travelled by road on their own. Similar hype was pompously touted as a means to build confidence among people. Indeed.  Then there was the “Test, Track and Treat” slogan, which did add somewhat to the outreach of testing but the plugging and cacophony far exceeded the actual results on ground.

Our callous but cocksure government(s) allowed Kumbh Mela and elections in many states,  which could have proved to be super spreaders and actually did prove to be so at some places. That these events should simply have been postponed is common sense. The rationale did not require any scientific temper, which, in any case, is missing. An attempt by the supporters of the government(s) to prove that these gatherings were not unsafe and that the states which had more case did not have these gatherings is such a cynical and laughable a posteriori logic.

A very high count of deaths, shortage of hospital beds, disappearance of medicines from the market and their black-marketing and serious deficit of Oxygen.  All these issues are of governance and for more than 30 days from early April to early May, it appeared that the governments, barring some exceptions, had simply abdicated and receded. And subsequently, indecision and procrastination started masquerading as decisions.

Having put salt in the wound by outright denial of the sufferings, the knife was twisted as well by lying blatantly. A simple example: https://beds.dgmhup-covid19.in/EN/covid19bedtrack,  is the official site dashboard of the Directorate of Medical & Health Services, Government of UP, to find out, live, the Covid hospital vacancy of beds. During the peak period of the 2^nd wave, all you got from this site was flagrant misinformation of inflated bed availability. As Mehmet Murat Ildan has said, “If you don’t speak the right things, then hush! If you don’t hush, then speak the right things!”, but these considerations are too refined and nuanced for a government used to getting away with arrant deceit encouraged by their sense of electoral invincibility. Governments become afraid of the truth when the truth they seek to obfuscate is unpleasant for them, not the public. 

The most curious case is if of Vaccination. The vaccination graph given below tells the story vividly; as the pandemic raged, the number of vaccinations fell instead of going up. The number was high initially as the manufacturers had gone ahead and stockpiled the vaccines entirely on their own initiative and not mandated by the government.

How did the central government handle the issue? Two manufacturers took up the burden of development and financing of vaccines upon themselves with attendant risks. They got no support in their development and capacity build up from the government. By the time their vaccines became good for  universal application, the fury of the pandemic had subsided to its lowest level and the government seized the moment as a Vishwaguru, a Pharma-king, a factory of vaccines for the world, usurping the credit to itself. Never mind that India’s status as a Pharma powerhouse was something in the making for decades, in spite of, and not because of this government. The Vishwaguru forgot that there was something called supply-chain and for our Pharma industry, China and USA held the key. All the altruistic pretensions evaporated as India herself was brought to her knees with even neighbouring countries turning to China for help and guidance. What followed should have been a quick course correction but the actions of the decision-makers reflected that they had decided that it was as broad as it was long so any port in this storm was fine. 

As the pandemic spread again and its lack of support for development of vaccines started getting exposed, it ordered some doses and started pressurizing the manufacturers with unreasonable demands. Hype once again replaced ground realities and sound planning became a causality and wish lists reigned. In the face of mounting criticism for not securing enough vaccines, weird announcements were made. Sample this announcement by nobody less than Dr. Paul, Member, Niti Aayog, assigned with responsibility of health sector:

The gap between the two doses of Covishield was started out as 4 to 8 weeks. As level of vaccination started falling back it was made 6 to 8 weeks. As the cry of quick vaccination gathered momentum in the face of rising cases and deaths, it was made 12 weeks. Never mind that the data on which it was based was available all the time; the clinical trial data was used cynically to serve what appeared to be motivated by the need to control the ado about shortage of vaccines. 

As ill-quipped opposition state governments demanded freedom to acquire vaccines, the Central government saw an opportunity to confuse the issue and finalized a  procurement formula with differential rates for itself, states and private hospitals. First of all, if the intention was to afford free vaccination generally for all, why these differential rates for the Centre and states? And if the Centre wanted to have a wider reach with paid vaccination to those who could afford from private hospitals, was this 25% apportionment not too high?

About this differential rate for states and freedom to import, the less said the better. It was  nothing short of creating competition between states when the entire country was in dire straits, reeling due to non-availability of vaccines. Having worked in government all my life and more importantly, having decided many tenders of public procurement valued more than Rs1000 crores, one knows what it takes to do it expeditiously. Did the state government babus have that? Vaccines are of several types, with their own protocol for storage, and a common bidding process would hardly work. Would these babus be able to prepare a bid document with technical specification for diverse type of vaccines? A government with a sense of purpose would have negotiated deals individually with manufacturers with differential pricing with a single point agenda: to secure as many vaccines as possible, given the emergency. But that was hardly the objective. Was the objective to boil the ocean a bit and then blame the public procurement policy, the whipping boy of non-doers? The series of news below clearly shows that it was nothing but a charade and diversionary red herring by some states to quieten other states for the time being. If it were not a serious issue, I would say, enjoy the burlesque, played out for more than a month in April and May. 

No surprises, but the denouement had this grand finale:

The Covin app started out as a reasonably effective system for registering and getting vaccinated. But in our urban comfort, did we forget that it was after all, a delivery system for the more privileged? Priority should be given to vulnerable and vectors/co-morbidity to mitigate the risks. We will take up interesting news items on this but meanwhile, enjoy the following: Walk-in vaccination for all adults announced on 25^th May. Really? Half the crowd for vaccination in Civil hospital here on 4^th March was of those registering at the site. That is walk-in, right? When was it withdrawn and now restored with banner headline fanfare?  And what takes the cake is another banner, NHA chief announcing on 24^th May that demand supply gap for vaccination was reduced from 11:1 to 6.5:1. Dear NHA chief sir, we still have not reached 20% of the population with a single dose, the number of vaccinations per day rise ever so slowly but in your highfaluting world of make-believe, you have declared that you have reached a milestone.

Don’t know whether to say Touché, or Voila or simply tear my hair.

I will continue this as more and more interesting news items emerge, but, meanwhile, if you wish to call the bluff of the government(s) towards more accountability, people,  do not do this or the government would say that people dropped their guard and brought it upon themselves: