Never before in 68 years of my life have I seen the people of India so scared as they are now. I remember the 1962 war with China when we schoolchildren took out a procession shouting slogans against Chinese premier Chou-en-Lai. We were not afraid.

The wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971 saw the whole people standing united against the enemy. I have also seen floods and droughts causing havoc but that, too, did not break the people’s confidence.

Natural calamities like the super cyclone that hit the Odisha coast, the Tsunami that hit the southern states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala and earthquakes in Gujarat and Uttarakhand saw the people joining hands in pure camaraderie.

Despondency and despair never gripped the nation. That is no longer the case. Here, in New Delhi, from where I write this column, the people are so scared of Coronavirus that they live confined to the four walls of their houses.

There was no resistance whatsoever when the government declared a week-long curfew that will conclude on Monday next. That is because many of them were themselves observing curfew already.

Schools and colleges remain closed while hospitals overflow with patients. There is acute shortage of hospital beds, medicines, ventilators and oxygen cylinders.

The number of Covid-19 cases has been increasing by leaps and bounds. Burial grounds and crematoria are unable to handle the large number of bodies reaching there. Often, the last rites are not even performed.

This is not a Delhi-specific situation. Reports from Bihar, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Kerala and other states are not any different. Nobody is sure whether he or she would catch the virus. Particularly worrisome is the high rate of death among the middle-aged.

One thing that unites the people at this point of time, irrespective of caste and creed, is the fear of Coronavirus. So when they heard that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would address the nation on April 20 at 8:45 pm, it was with great expectation that they listened to him.

Yet again, he disappointed the nation. He did not have a single announcement to make, other than telling the nation that lockdown would be the government’s last resort. He exhorted the migrant workers to stay put at their places of work and not leave for their own villages.

Modi had nothing to offer them. His suggestion to the youth to form mohalla committees to educate the people is like the savant telling his followers to keep chanting a certain mantra 108 times, multiplied by 108 times.

This was not what was expected of the Prime Minister of the country. Coronavirus is no longer a new thing. We have lived with it for nearly fifteen months. 

It should not have been difficult for Modi to know that there would be a new surge and the nation should be prepared for it. Alas, what is the level of preparedness? 

One of his ministers was heard telling a patient complaining about the lack of oxygen cylinders at a hospital in Damoh in Madhya Pradesh that he would give him two tight slaps. That is exactly what the people have been getting from his government.

I wonder what right Modi had to speak about social distancing when he was busy addressing large public meetings in West Bengal in wanton disregard of all Covid protocols.

As Prime Minister, nothing should have mattered to him more than the health and well-being of the people. How would a defeat or victory in West Bengal matter more to him than the health of the people? Did the BJP’s defeat in Delhi thrice matter to him? 

No Indian prime minister has travelled to so many countries as Modi in so short a time. He claims to be on first-name terms with many of their leaders but they are all one in closing their airports for passenger flights from India.

Modi is not the only one whom they are afraid of. They are, in fact, afraid of every Indian because they think that an Indian is a potential carrier of Coronavirus. Modi talked about India’s pharmaceuticals and their capability to meet the challenge of Coronavirus.

However, what is the ground situation? During the Bihar elections in 2020, the BJP made a promise that the vaccine against Coronavirus would be given free of cost to the people of Bihar.

Why only Bihar? When the controversy gathered steam, the ruling party claimed that it would be provided free of cost to the whole population of the country. Things do not seem to be happening so.

So far, only about 10 per cent of the population has been vaccinated. To contain the pandemic, at least 60 to 70 per cent of the population should be vaccinated. At the present rate of vaccination, such a percentage of the population cannot be vaccinated even before the end of the year.

China, America and Israel, to name a few, have already achieved tremendous progress in this regard. True, the American population is only one-fourth of India’s. Israel is a much smaller country.

The point is that they could achieve progress whereas we could not. Modi boasted about India’s vaccine production capability. So far India’s production is only 20 per cent of the global production.

There is now consensus that vaccine has great utility in the fight against Covid-19. In other words, vaccination is a critical component of the anti-Covid-19 policy of the Union government. That does not seem to be so now.

In fact, Modi’s policy seems to be to wash his hands of Corona management a la Pilate. He wants the states to pick up the bill and manage the pandemic. In other words, he is on a retreat mode!

Under the new policy the government unveiled, the Centre would buy 50 per cent of the vaccine produced in the country from the companies at Rs 150 per unit. 

The states will have to buy their requirements at Rs 400. The companies will have the freedom to sell to private parties at Rs 600.

The new arrangement will reportedly come into force when people between the ages of 18 and 45 would be vaccinated, beginning May 1, 2021. This would lead to situations when the pharmaceutical firms would indulge in profiteering.

There can be no disputing that India’s economy is in bad shape. Millions of people have lost their jobs. Nobody knows at what rate the people would get vaccine if they have to buy it. There will be GST and other taxes on the vaccine.

It would not be a surprise if the per unit cost goes up to Rs 1000 in the open market. If an unemployed person has to get himself, his wife, two children and parents vaccinated twice, it will cost him Rs 12,000. 

How many Indians can afford it, particularly at this juncture?  They will not take the vaccine and the government’s vaccination programme will go for a toss. If the target of covering 60-70 per cent of the population is not achieved, the pandemic will remain a threat forever.

In the Budget, the government had earmarked Rs 35,000 crore towards the cost of vaccine production. One of the basic principles of economics is that the cost decreases when the production increases.

The Central government should be able to bargain with the vaccine manufacturers and get the vaccine at the lowest price. Of course, no company can produce vaccine free of cost. They should be able to get a reasonable profit.

These are matters that can be settled by the government and the pharmaceutical companies, if necessary, with the help of an arbitrator. What would be the total cost of vaccinating 70 per cent of the population? Will it be more than 1 per cent of the GDP? No, it cannot be. 

Modi bought two state-of-the-art Boeing aircraft for his travels. They have better facilities than the one used by the US President. Was cost a factor when he ordered the planes?

Again, was cost a factor when Rafale aircraft were brought from France? Are the people’s health less important than Modi’s travel comforts? If he has a heart, Modi should announce that his government will bear the total cost of vaccination. Or, is it that he wants to help corporates to flourish at the cost of the people’s health? 

The health crisis has brought to the fore the inadequacies in the healthcare system. We need more hospitals, more doctors and more nurses than more worship centres, more statues and more priests. The rulers should respect the views of the critics, more than that of sycophants. Had that been the case, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would not have been made fun of when he wrote a letter to Modi.

Last year, the finance minister addressed a series of Press conferences where the lady announced a string of measures purportedly to improve the economy. Did anyone get a single penny from the government?

In the US, every citizen received $1400 twice from the government to help them cope with the difficulties caused by the spread of Coronavirus. There are millions of poor people, who also vote for Modi and his party. What has he done for them? 

Now, Modi wants the migrant labourer to remain where they are. Why can’t he make some payment to such people so that they can manage their affairs at a time when they have lost their jobs? It is easier to exhort than to help.

I have already mentioned how he and his Sancho Panza violated all the Covid protocols in their bid to capture power in West Bengal. All this while, his handpicked chief minister of Uttarakhand was speaking nonsense about a religious fair and about how the Ganga would cleanse everyone of Coronavirus.

Last year when a Muslim organisation organised an international conference at Nizamuddin, the police registered cases against them for allegedly spreading Covid. The fact is that when the conference took place, there was no order banning such congregations. 

The foreign delegates who attended the conference came through the green channel at the Delhi airport. They were not parachuted. While they were hounded all over India and a vicious campaign was launched against them, not a finger was raised against those who organised the massive gathering at Haridwar.

It does not redound to the credit of a nation that the law is practised differently for different people. Modi and his knicker-turned-trouser-wearers may claim for public consumption that cows produce oxygen, cow urine is the best remedy for many ailments and cow-dung is the best antiseptic substance available in nature but they go to AIIMS and Apollo when they are affected.

There are no such comforts for the ordinary citizen who has to stand in long queues to procure oxygen cylinders for their relatives gasping for breath in hospitals. 

In retrospect, Modi is more sinned against than sinning. How can he be blamed for the present situation? He personally believed that Coronavirus would disappear if every citizen made sound by clanging vessels and diyas replaced electric light for nine minutes. 

He also believed that Coronavirus could be defeated in 21 days, the exact days the Pandavas took to defeat the Kauravas in the Mahabharata war at Kurukshetra. Similarly, he believed that he was doing something Herculean when he banned high-denomination notes and asked everyone not to move when the national lockdown was enforced.

It is, therefore, pointless to blame him. In 10 days the election results will come. If, as indications suggest, Modi wins West Bengal, everyone will hail him as a great leader, a great strategist. 

Nobody will then blame him for the inadequacies of his administration, causing a national crisis the like of which the nation has never experienced. After all, do we not believe in karma, though we call it by different names? We get the government we deserve.

ajphilip@gmail.com