As if to pre­pare us, we are be­ing told that worse is still to come, with the pan­demic likely to peak in the sec­ond half of May 2021. There is no news or views of com­fort ex­cept the non-gov­ern­men­tal sec­tor where Good Samar­i­tans have taken over the man­tle of sup­ply­ing Oxy­gen cylin­ders, life-sav­ing drugs and do­ing just about any­thing to save lives of dear ones and even those un­known to them. Ob­serv­ing the cri­sis from afar, emerg­ing from the colos­sal fail­ure of In­di­a’s health sys­tems, UK-based colum­nist and ac­tivist Jagdeesh Singh ques­tions the pol­icy paral­y­sis lead­ing to poor im­ple­men­ta­tion at all lev­els and asks whether the COVID19 cri­sis will be In­di­a’s un­do­ing?

INDI­A’S TRACK RECORD OF 70 YEARS of ab­ject fail­ure in pro­vid­ing ba­sic needs and ser­vices to its pop­u­la­tion, on mat­ters of health, ed­u­ca­tion, clean drink­ing wa­ter, law and or­der and hu­man rights has whole­somely come into its own in the cur­rent mon­u­men­tal fail­ure to ad­dress the ram­pant COVID19 in­fec­tion which is bring­ing the In­dian pop­u­la­tion and so­ci­ety to its knees.

In­di­a’s mon­u­men­tal fail­ure on COVID19 is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of its gross fail­ure on so many as­pects of hu­man life safety and pro­tec­tion, which has been go­ing on through­out its 70-years of post -‘in­de­pen­dence’. Like so many third world states, in­clud­ing Pak­istan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, African states and more, the In­dian state has been a tick­ing time-bomb for decades.

In­di­a’s prime story is one of mount­ing fail­ures and in­jus­tices on its civil­ians who sim­ply have to bear the bru­tal brunt of what lit­tle In­dia of­fers to them, cou­pled with the mass cor­rup­tion in pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion and po­lice bru­tal­ity and crim­i­nal­ity, all un­der­pinned by an un­car­ing, power fo­cussed, self-en­rich­ing rule elite.

In­dia has failed as a ‘coun­try’ and a ‘na­tion’. It has fur­ther­more failed as a state to pro­vide ba­sic needs and qual­ity of life to the civil­ians who find them­selves liv­ing by force within its ex­pan­sive bound­aries in­her­ited di­rectly from the British In­dia em­pire.

The mis­ery, op­pres­sion and fail­ure of life in In­dia, acutely re­vealed in the COVID19 fail­ures is a clear recipe for an im­mi­nent and ul­ti­mate col­lapse of this over-sized, bloated mon­ster which is dri­ven by an in­sa­tiable and para­noid drive for more and more power and riches.

The mis­ery, op­pres­sion and fail­ure of life in In­dia, acutely re­vealed in the COVID19 fail­ures is a clear recipe for an im­mi­nent and ul­ti­mate col­lapse of this over-sized, bloated mon­ster which is dri­ven by an in­sa­tiable and para­noid drive for more and more power and riches.

The Modi gov­ern­men­t’s sell­ing off of In­dia-made vac­cines to for­eign coun­tries, whilst the peo­ple at home are be­ing de­nied the same: is so per­fectly and typ­i­cal of the In­dian rul­ing elite. The same who re­torts to the Sikhs, Pan­jaabis, Kash­miris and more with the term ‘anti-na­tion­al’, ‘sep­a­ratist’ and ‘ex­trem­ist’ when they seek le­git­i­mate rights, jus­tice and self-de­ter­mi­na­tion.

In­dia is a whole­sale fail­ure. It is a tick­ing-time-bomb. Its 70-year his­tory is lit­tered with fail­ure af­ter fail­ure, scan­dal af­ter scan­dal, mal­prac­tice af­ter mal­prac­tice, geno­cide af­ter geno­cide, re­pres­sion af­ter re­pres­sion and so much more.

In­dia has noth­ing to show or of­fer the world from its 70-year ex­pe­ri­ence. What has it achieved? In 5-years time, it is about to run out of wa­ter al­to­gether in many of its ma­jor cities. It has com­pletely failed to pro­vide clean and safe drink­ing wa­ter from taps to its pop­u­la­tion.

Hun­dreds of mil­lions con­tinue to starve and die. A woman is raped every 20-min­utes. The hun­dreds of mil­lions of Dal­its are bru­talised, per­se­cuted and mur­dered daily, as an in­te­gral part of In­dian life. A child goes miss­ing every 10-min­utes.

Hun­dreds of mil­lions con­tinue to starve and die. A woman is raped every 20-min­utes. The hun­dreds of mil­lions of Dal­its are bru­talised, per­se­cuted and mur­dered daily, as an in­te­gral part of In­dian life. A child goes miss­ing every 10-min­utes.

The COVID19 cri­sis has sim­ply come along to re­veal yet an­other di­men­sion to an al­ready long-failed In­dia.

Lit­tle won­der that all within the bound­aries of In­dia, if they have means and chance, are mi­grat­ing out and away to a bet­ter life abroad. No­body wants to stay in In­dia.

Pan­jaab, Kash­mir, Tamil­nadu, Ma­nipur, As­sam, Ben­gal and all oth­ers could very ef­fi­ciently and adeptly han­dle the COVID19 chal­lenge if they were in­de­pen­dent states, able to con­trol the hu­man traf­fic in and out of their bor­ders and ap­ply their do­mes­tic re­sources and means to deal with their lo­calised sit­u­a­tion. As a mega-state, In­dia will al­ways be a boa-con­stric­tor en­cir­cling these small states.

It is ap­palling that even in the cur­rent sup­ply of the COVID19 vac­cine, In­di­a’s Union gov­ern­ment is fol­low­ing a dual pric­ing pol­icy -less for the Union gov­ern­ment and more for the states and even more for the al­ready-crum­bling pri­vate sec­tor hos­pi­tals. Is this a sam­ple of “the wel­fare-state” of In­dia, which dreams of be­com­ing a world power?

It is ap­palling that even in the cur­rent sup­ply of the COVID19 vac­cine, In­di­a’s Union gov­ern­ment is fol­low­ing a dual pric­ing pol­icy -less for the Union gov­ern­ment and more for the states and even more for the al­ready-crum­bling pri­vate sec­tor hos­pi­tals. Is this a sam­ple of “the wel­fare-state” of In­dia, which dreams of be­com­ing a world power?

Re­cur­ring 70-years of fail­ure and mis­ery, man­i­fest in the cur­rent cri­sis of hu­man lives and health ser­vices, may just trig­ger a wave to bring­ing an end to this hor­ri­bly cor­rupt, in­ef­fi­cient, obese mon­strous state of In­dia.

Let the states choose their des­tiny. Let there be power and free­dom to the small na­tions, who in their small­ness will be able to han­dle and ad­dress crises like COVID19 far more pos­i­tively and dili­gently, un­shack­led from the suf­fo­ca­tion and in­ter­fer­ence of the mighty In­dian ma­chine.