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In the midst of a raging fire, of priority is to douse it and prevent further destruction — not be concerned about its origins and whether it could have been averted. So, despite the temptation to ask ourselves whether the current COVID-19 wave could have been averted, it’s more important to be concerned about — now what?
As one scans through news of an enraged and frightened people, exhausted doctors and care-givers, bewildered politicians, and a confused media — hunting for a credible response to questions of ‘how’ and ‘why’ about the second COVID wave — it becomes clear that what is needed at this time is leadership.
At such moments, effective leadership requires four key characteristics:
India has not yet seen leadership that fulfils the above criteria. While the goal is clear, neither policy, funding nor institutional clarity is consistent. For example, containing this infection — that spreads through close physical contact, and now there is increasing evidence of it being airborne — requires people to wear masks and moderate social behaviour by avoiding crowding.
But in reality, the political leadership — at both the Central and State levels — allowed elections, the Kumbh Mela, and other similar crowd-gathering activities for political gains that they felt would be compromised if people’s beliefs and practices were interfered with. Or for that matter, the goal of universal immunisation from 1 May 2021, but without clarity on funding and availability.
Such inconsistencies contribute to more confusion and doubts over the governments’ decision-making abilities.
While centralisation can at times be helpful in ensuring uniformity, it can also add to enormous delays that are unaffordable in fighting fires.
So, with the attention of the PM and HM diverted to crucial elections since March 2021 — not unexpectedly — there have been enormous delays in sorting out critical infrastructure and supply issues required for COVID containment strategy — be it timely tendering out of contracts for establishing 110 oxygen plants or the placing of orders to ensure a steady supply of vaccines for achieving the target of 23 crores vaccinated people by end-July.
With the decline in case loads from October 2020 onwards, vaccination was positioned as the solution to nail the virus. Unfortunately, the controversies accompanying the approvals for manufacturing the two vaccines in India did contribute to vaccine-hesitancy, that ought to have been countered by a high-decibel multimedia campaign alongside tying-up vaccine supply.
This did not happen. These myriad issues too have delayed availability:
These issues seem to be getting addressed now at the prime ministerial level. It seems unlikely that supplies in adequate quantities will become available for vaccinating the younger age groups before July 2021.
For fighting pandemics, the most critical requirement for the government and for the leadership is transparency and engaging with the people.
The communication strategy of this government has been woeful and needs to be hugely stepped-up, a capability that the Department of Health has. Behavioural change cannot be enforced by the police… it has to be brought about by a set of facilitating policies. Penalising a driver in his car for not wearing a mask, but allowing rallies and political meetings without masks immediately creates distrust and non-compliance.
In the UK, a parliamentary committee was constituted to monitor government orders, policies and implementation of matters related to actions pertaining to COVID-19. Such a committee would be useful to keep the Executive on their toes and lend some accountability, apart from pointing out critical issues for the government on a timely basis.
It is vital and critical to be united at this time.
Finally, it is important that the Union Government decentralises the efforts to states, districts and panchayats. Without people’s involvement, it is impossible to stamp out the novel coronavirus, that is ‘scared’ of only one thing — an alert people.
This would imply that the governments give up their ‘hostility’ to civil society as key partners on the one hand, and the central government releases funds for states to engage the local bodies and civil society to implement a range of interventions — quarantine centres, isolation centres, migrant welfare, delivery of food rations, ensuring timely referral to hospitals, and rolling out vaccines.
It’s tough fighting a battle with a hidden enemy. But as the PM said a few months back, it’s a battle that not only needs to be fought, but won decisively.
(K Sujatha Rao is Former Union Health Secretary, Govt of India. She tweets at @sujakrao. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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