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.