Team Modi Drove Us Into a Ditch. Who Will Be Held Accountable?

Modi’s belief in his supremacy & his unwillingness to listen has gotten worse — as have the consequences for India.

“This government is all about headline management,” former BJP minister Arun Shourie presciently said on the first anniversary of Narendra Modi’s tenure as prime minister.

It is no surprise that as the country spirals into chaos in the wake of the pandemic’s second wave, Team Modi is pulling out all the stops to rehabilitate his image. What is surprising is how shockingly bad they are at it.

On 11 May, The Australia Today, a site of uncertain parentage, published an article that excoriated the “vulture journalists”, both foreign and home-grown, for profiting off the pandemic. A day later, The Daily Guardian, the recently-birthed offspring of ITV Network, went one better with a piece proclaiming that ‘PM Modi has been working hard’.
“Don’t fall for the opposition’s barbs”, its author, BJP spokesperson Sudesh Verma, cautioned. On cue, an all-star line-up of Cabinet ministers and BJP office-bearers spray-painted social media with shouty “PM Modi has been working hard” posts. (After all, Cabinet ministers who have no role in pandemic control need to do something to while away the weary hours).

Modi’s ‘Mission Hard Work’

Cue Mission Hard Work, made visible through a series of ‘high level interactions’.  On 16 May, Modi spoke to the chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh and Puducherry on the COVID situation. On 20 May, he told officials of 10 states that it was necessary to avoid wastage.

On 21 May, he ‘interacted’ with the doctors, paramedics and frontline workers in Varanasi, and ‘choked up’ as he spoke of how the virus had snatched away “many loved ones”.

The death toll on that day, when he managed to squeeze out a tear for the collective loss, was 295,560. PM Modi’s ‘interactions’ with chief ministers did not go so well — first, Delhi’s Arvind Kejriwal kicked up a ruckus by telecasting a 23 April meeting live; on 20 May, West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee railed against the latest such meeting, calling it a “super flop” and saying the meeting was humiliating as none of the attending CMs were allowed to speak.

The government’s facials, manicures and pedicures continued on other fronts.

On 19 April, the Prime Minister’s Office instructed the various ministries to share success stories which would be showcased on the second anniversary of Modi’s second term (the planned celebration has, mercifully, since been put on hold). On 23 May, the BJP asked its leaders to be visibly more “sympathetic and empathetic”.

BJP’s ‘Visible’ Relief Efforts — And Twitter Raid

On the same day, Minister of State for Home Affairs, G Kishan Reddy, was posing for the cameras holding up a pack of Doritos chips he was distributing as part of the relief efforts — of which effort the best you can say is that it was visible. Later that evening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP President JP Nadda hosted a meeting with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) General Secretary Dattatreya Hosable and others, to discuss the impact of the COVID crisis on the image of the party and its fallout on the Uttar Pradesh elections slated for March-April 2022 — an exemplary model of thinking and planning ahead.

After that promising start to the week, the Delhi Police went one better on Monday when it sent a team from the Special Cell — an outfit created to combat organised crime and terrorism — to raid the offices of Twitter India, after first alerting friendly TV news channels.

The raid was inept — the social media company has been in ‘work from home’ mode since last year; the reason given for the raid, hastily downgraded to a Dunzo-style document-delivery service, even more so. All that it accomplished was to draw renewed attention to BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra’s attempts — aided and abetted by a stellar lineup of ministers and party honchos — to smear the Congress party via a document of such dubious provenance that Twitter flagged it as ‘manipulated media’, and Patra himself has since been dodging a slew of court cases on the plea that he is engaged in relief work.

Efforts at Image Rehabilitation — and the Contrasting Reality of India’s COVID Nightmare

Despite the ham-handed efforts at image rehabilitation, the stark reality of India, captured every day in media outlets at home and around the world, is that fresh cases continue to proliferate; that states are pleading for oxygen and for vaccines; that social media is being wallpapered with distress calls on behalf of terminal patients; that ambulances wait in line outside hospitals since there are  no beds available; that several of those who do get beds die when supplies of oxygen run out.

Crematoriums are short on both space and wood while the electric versions, unable to cope with being pressed into service 24 x7, are burning out; the surfeit of corpses is spilling into the Ganga and the Yamuna, and the sandbanks of both rivers are pock-marked with impromptu graves.

It was not supposed to be like this.

When we wished each other on New Year’s Day, it was with a sense of optimism. The tide, we assured each other, had turned. The headlines justified our collective sense of relief. On 16 January, the country kick-started its vaccination program, the roadmap for which, Modi had assured the country in his Independence Day speech last year, was ready.

On 26 January, India reported a record low of just 9,100 new cases. On 28 January, even as the daily caseload went below the 9000 mark, Modi went to the World Economic Forum meet in Davos with a “message of confidence, positivity, and hope”, as lead-in to a speech that mocked the Cassandras who had predicted catastrophic consequences for his country, and boasting of how India, having conquered the virus and launched the world’s ‘largest’ vaccination drive, was now sending vaccines around the world to help save lives.

Electioneering Amid a Pandemic — and Advertising a ‘Beautiful-Clean-Safe’ Maha Kumbh

Back home, on 28 February, the Election Commission announced an extended poll schedule covering four states and one Union Territory. And in the midst of a frenetic series of election rallies, Modi joined the chief minister of Uttarakhand on the front pages of national dailies to extend “a hearty welcome to all devotees” to the Haridwar Maha Kumbh which, the ads proclaimed, was “beautiful clean safe (sic)”.

It was only when you flipped over the ad and got to the news section that you learnt that the daily case count had reached 68,020 — a five-month high.

On 7 April, the case count hit 103,558, eclipsing the record of 97,894 set way back in September 2020. On 12 April, India overtook Brazil to rank second in overall cases. On 14 April, India breached the two lakh mark. On 17 April, Modi told the voters of Asansol, in West Bengal, that he had never seen such crowds in his life; on 21 April the daily tally of new cases topped the three lakh mark. The records continued to tumble and on 1 May, the country recorded over four lakh cases in a single day.

The toll kept mounting — the faithful, who were told a communal dip in the Ganges, was a cure-all, began to die; seers leading the Kumbh died; teachers forcibly ‘volunteered’ for poll duty died; doctors and healthcare workers died while fighting the odds to save lives; and regular folks died in their hundreds despite their best efforts to survive.

How Did We Get Here, From the Early Euphoria of January?

Various state governments resorted to fudging figures; regional language newspapers stepped up with sterling reportage that underlined the shocking discrepancies. Even the venerable Lancet, just two years short of its 200th anniversary, was forced to take notice of the apocalyptic mess the country was in (and Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, yet to seek treatment for his chronic foot-in-mouth disease, got flak for promoting a vague blogpost that he said was a “fair rebuttal”).

How, though, did we get here, from the euphoria of early January? The Centre has attempted various distractions and deflections — people did not observe social distancing, Modi unblinkingly told chief ministers even while he was in the midst of packed election rallies.

States dropped the ball on ordering vaccines, his acolytes chorussed, hoping the country wouldn’t remember that permission was given to the states to source supplies only in mid-April. By taking his eyes off the road, Modi had driven the country into a ditch. Now he, and his sycophantic chorus of Cabinet ministers and paid propagandists, were busy blaming the passengers for not fastening their seatbelt. “He will not listen,” I remember writing back in October 2017.

“He will not heed.” In the four years since, Modi’s belief in his omnipotence, and his unwillingness to listen, has only gotten worse — as have the consequences for the country.

The government was warned of the need to order supplies of the vaccine early, and in bulk, as the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union nations were doing by mid-2020. However, it placed its first order — for 1.1 crore doses with Serum Institute of India and 55 lakh doses with Bharat Biotech — on 12 January, four days before announcing the nationwide vaccination drive.

In November 2020, the all-party Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare presented — in both Houses of Parliament — a report that, inter alia, warned of “a strong need to ensure that the oxygen inventory is in place and oxygen prices are controlled…” “The Panel also recommends the government for encouraging adequate production of oxygen for ensuring its supply as per demand in hospitals”.

Net result: The government decided, and the chairman of the Rajya Sabha announced, that there would be no more Parliamentary Panel meetings till the “situation improves”.

In early March, the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genetics Consortium (INSACOG), a forum of scientific advisers set up by the government, warned that a new, even more contagious variant of the virus, was taking hold in the country. It was ignored. Shortly after the story broke, INSACOG’s lead virologist Shahid Jameel resigned from the panel. In early April, states alarmed by spiking numbers pleaded with the prime minister to extend the age of vaccination to cover the younger demographic. Modi refused. And then overruled himself ten days later.

The Vaccine Mess

Also in April, the policy and healthcare spheres were alight with warnings that the government’s abrupt U-turn in asking states to procure their own stocks of vaccine, after having earlier said the Centre would source stocks, would result in disaster. And here we are:

On Monday, 24 May, the Punjab government said that vaccine manufacturer Moderna had refused to deal with it, and would only engage with the Centre. A day later, Pfizer turned down Punjab’s request.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the two vaccine majors had turned down his government’s appeal. And as Maharashtra joined in to say it was getting no response to the global tender it had floated, the Centre did yet another U-turn. “We are coordinating at the central level with vaccine makers,” Joint Secretary in the Health Ministry Lav Agarwal said Tuesday, adding that “their order books are full most of the time…”

While the joint secretary told the media that the vaccine majors would get back to the government when and if they had surplus stock, his boss, Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, said on 19 May that India will get 267 crore vaccines by the end of 2021. On 21 May, the Centre told the Madras High Court that 216 crore vaccines will be available by year-end. And on 24 May, the Centre, still speaking in tongues, told the Kerala High Court that “there is no fixed target for dispensation of vaccines in states and Union Territories.” MEA Jaishankar, meanwhile, is in the US seeking vaccines for India. “It is hoped,” this report says, “that he will succeed in getting US vaccine manufacturers to get over their hesitancy to supply to India.”

Clinging On To Hope

So, that is where we are now: crossing our fingers and clinging to hope. The hope that some other entity — a vaccine manufacturer, a country — will pull us out of the mess our twice-elected prime minister and his coterie got us into.

Meanwhile, the government’s spinmeisters are busy trying to figure out how to lessen the impact of their handmade disaster in the next round of elections.

What Accountability Truly Means

Elections are about accountability. They are about the people — on the one day in every five years where they have a voice — asking the leadership for an accounting of its deeds and misdeeds over their tenure. Or at least, that is how it would be in a functioning democracy. Here, though, we have malfunctioning anarchy, piloted by one man and his henchman. Accountability? Sure — if Delhi’s whisper circuit speaks true, we are in for a Cabinet reshuffle shortly. And the Health Minister — who had no role to play in managing the pandemic — will make for a handy scape-goat, quartered and hung out for the delectation of prime time bloviators, while we get back to mourning our dead.

In the late 1960s, a poster parodying the US Department of Civil Defense provided an eight-point checklist of “Instructions to patrons on premises in case of nuclear attack”. Item #7: “Immediately upon seeing the brilliant flash of nuclear blast, bend over and place your head firmly between your legs”. Item #8: “Then kiss your a** goodbye”.

On 11 May, the headlines were about India’s daily caseload hitting an all-time high of 152,879 cases. Later that morning, Modi went on air with the May edition of his radio program Mann Ki Baat, and expounded on ‘dhyana’ — an “act of contemplation” that, he said, “pacifies the agitated mind and relaxes it”. He told his audience to “gently close the eyes and raise the face slightly. Breathe normally.”

‘Kiss your a** goodbye’, he forbore to add.

(Prem Panicker is a senior Indian journalist and tweets @prempanicker. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)