In­di­ans are dy­ing, some 4000 plus every day. Life-sav­ing equip­ment is ly­ing in ware­houses of the world and even in In­dia. Oxy­gen is still a scarce com­mod­ity. The Supreme Court of In­dia has set up an Oxy­gen Task Force, clearly say­ing that the gov­ern­ment has failed in its man­age­ment. The Health cri­sis has strained the pub­lic and pri­vate health sys­tems. Yet, the tax struc­ture is still not in keep­ing with the need. WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh writes an Open Let­ter to the In­dian Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi sug­gest­ing a quick amend­ment of the For­eign Con­tri­bu­tion Reg­u­la­tion Act (FCRA) to en­able non-gov­ern­men­tal, not-for-profit bod­ies to re­ceive and man­age ur­gently-re­quired Covid19-pre­ven­tion-re­lated equip­ment and con­sum­ables into the coun­try.

DEAR PRIME MIN­IS­TER NAREN­DRA MODI: Greet­ings in the Name of God -the Light of every soul. To­day, as we wit­ness ex­cru­ci­at­ing hu­man pain and suf­fer­ing all around us, vic­tim fam­i­lies and oth­ers have started ques­tion­ing God, leave alone hu­man gov­er­nors and ad­min­is­tra­tors. Hands go up in prayer and ap­peal, cry­ing and yearn­ing from God to put an end to the mis­ery caused by the Covid19 virus, made worse by the un­pro­fes­sional, un­car­ing, in­hu­man and typ­i­cally ‘pass­ing the buck style’ man­age­ment mantra, not-own­ing re­spon­si­bil­ity and pass­ing it on to the states, hos­pi­tals and even the peo­ple. This lack­lus­tre, ad hoc and ca­sual han­dling of the health cri­sis is only a con­tin­uum of dis­as­ter man­age­ment in In­dia.

The pop­u­la­tion of In­dia -rich and poor, rural and ur­ban, ed­u­ca­tion and il­lit­er­ate is se­ri­ously look­ing into the cul­pa­bil­ity of the gov­ern­ment of In­dia run by you which has com­pre­hen­sively failed its peo­ple. Call it every­thing -mis­gov­er­nance, lapse, over­sight, neg­li­gence, fail­ure of the sys­tem or even crime against hu­man­ity, your gov­ern­ment, the po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship around you and the ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fi­cials are all re­spon­si­ble for the deaths hap­pen­ing by the hour and hard­ships be­ing faced by the peo­ple.

There has never been much value at­tached to hu­man life in In­dia, any­way. Ex­em­plary com­pen­sa­tions are rare even from the courts of the land. How­ever, now the in­fec­tious virus and its sis­ter-like in­ef­fi­cient po­lit­i­cal mu­tant have hit very hard, es­pe­cially con­sid­er­ing the fact that the gov­ern­ment had all that it takes to pre­vent the slide into an abyss. The Covid19 cri­sis has de­gen­er­ated from a health dis­as­ter strik­ing the pop­u­la­tion to a so­cial and po­lit­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe of unimag­in­able pro­por­tions.

Your Home Min­is­ter, Health Min­is­ter and Fi­nance Min­is­ter have lost their voice in these cru­cial times. Modi Bhai, the buck stops at your door, whether you like it or not, whether your ad­min­is­tra­tion both­ers or not and whether your party be­lieves this to be true or not.

Whether the vac­cine is worth it or not, is a sep­a­rate mat­ter. How­ever, your bravado at vac­cine diplo­macy by send­ing mil­lions of vac­cines to other coun­tries, with­out car­ing for In­di­a’s teem­ing mil­lions is nei­ther ex­cus­able nor par­don­able, par­tic­u­larly con­sid­er­ing the poli­cies be­ing fol­lowed by other vac­cine-pro­duc­ing coun­tries.

With all this angst against you and your gov­ern­ment, I write this Open Let­ter with a glim­mer of hope that even at this nth hour, your gov­ern­ment will take some ef­fec­tive steps to sal­vage the sit­u­a­tion by merely amend­ing some laws which are acutely hin­der­ing the avail­abil­ity of life-sav­ing re­lief ma­te­r­ial in In­dia.

To­day, it is sin­is­ter to note that while it is easy for an In­dian crick­eter to bring in his gifted car into the coun­try with­out any duty or tax, but in such an at­mos­phere as the pre­sent one, it is ex­pen­sive and dif­fi­cult to bring in life-sav­ing equip­ment and in­di­vid­ual use gad­gets and con­sum­ables for Covid19 pa­tients and for pre­ven­tion of the spread of the virus. It is ironic that while the pop­u­la­tion is dy­ing, the gov­ern­ment is mak­ing money from du­ties, taxes, cesses and more. This vul­ture-like method­ol­ogy must change im­me­di­ately in the pre­sent sit­u­a­tion and a bench­mark set for any such fu­ture hap­pen­ing -nat­ural or man-made.

It is eas­ier for a crick­eter to bring in a gifted car with­out taxes or du­ties but im­pos­si­ble to like­wise bring in life-sav­ing equip­ment and drugs. What a bloody shame!

While your gov­ern­ment has waived off cus­toms du­ties and IGST on oxy­gen-re­lated equip­ment, still hos­pi­tals, non-gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies and oth­ers who want to bring in Oxy­gen con­cen­tra­tors di­rectly to them can­not do so be­cause there is no waiver un­der the For­eign Con­tri­bu­tion Reg­u­la­tion Act (FCRA). What­ever lit­tle has trick­led into In­dia is ei­ther a gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment ex­change as part of the coun­try to coun­try diplo­matic, strate­gic and busi­ness ties or through some gov­ern­men­tal NGOs who have the priv­i­lege of con­ces­sions un­der FCRA or some other few NGOs who have the req­ui­site per­mis­sions.

The re­ports of dead bod­ies wash­ing ashore the Ganges is an in­deli­ble blot. The sight of a rel­a­tive tak­ing away their dead mother on a bike and an­other walk­ing from the hos­pi­tal hold­ing the dead body of his child, for lack of an am­bu­lance or be­ing un­able to pay for it, will make the pop­u­lace read­ing and watch­ing this sick. I am not sure of the pachy­der­mous min­is­ters and of­fi­cials.

Let me share a real ex­am­ple. A phil­an­thropic cor­po­rate house is will­ing to do­nate a few mil­lion N95 masks to an In­dian NGO. The ship­ment has been turned down by the In­dian NGO be­cause even with FCRA, the NGO will have to pay mil­lions of dol­lars as cus­toms duty be­cause N95 Masks is not cov­ered in the waiver list of the Oxy­gen-re­lated re­lief equip­ment an­nounced in the last few days for in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive re­ceipt in In­dia. Is this not a cry­ing shame?

An­other ex­am­ple, first there are no oxy­gen cylin­ders. Sec­ond, if oxy­gen cylin­ders are there, there are no flowme­ters to fix on top of the oxy­gen cylin­ders. It is nei­ther rocket sci­ence nor atomic to pro­duce flowme­ters. Why can’t this be done in many of the pub­lic sec­tor units in this hour of dire need?

The Right to dig­nity of the dead is uni­ver­sal. Since time im­memo­r­ial, hu­mankind has been pay­ing re­spects in a be­fit­ting man­ner to those who pass away. Fam­i­lies and so­ci­ety go to great lengths to en­sure that the de­ceased are given a proper bur­ial or their bod­ies cre­mated with love, care and de­vo­tion. This un­prece­dented cri­sis has put even this un­der strain and has reached blas­phe­mous heights with the ris­ing num­ber of deaths every day. The re­ports of dead bod­ies wash­ing ashore the Ganges is an in­deli­ble blot. The sight of a rel­a­tive tak­ing away their dead mother on a bike and an­other walk­ing from the hos­pi­tal hold­ing the dead body of his child, for lack of an am­bu­lance or be­ing un­able to pay for it, will make the pop­u­lace read­ing and watch­ing this sick. I am not sure of the pachy­der­mous min­is­ters and of­fi­cials.

Please freeze all taxes, du­ties, charges and fees for the next six months, at least.

In­ter­na­tional bod­ies, phil­an­thropists, In­dian Di­as­pora and Sikh Di­as­pora donors are wait­ing in the wings, em­pathis­ing with the peo­ple of In­dia in this hour of suf­fer­ing. It is time we do some­thing ur­gently to con­sol­i­date what is pos­si­ble. Your gov­ern­ment will be able to pro­vide much-needed suc­cour to the peo­ple of In­dia, if you take the fol­low­ing steps tonight, not to­mor­row:

1. Cus­toms duty must be waived on all prod­ucts, equip­ment, med­i­cine in­clud­ing vac­cines that are im­ported into the coun­try.
2. FCRA pro­vi­sions must be re­laxed for NGOs with stan­dard reg­is­tra­tions un­der sec­tion 12AA and/​or 80G of the In­come Tax Act and they should be al­lowed to bring in re­lief ma­te­r­ial in kind with­out even a day’s de­lay. FCRA ap­provals take a lot of time and the gov­ern­ment needs to ur­gently grant an ex­emp­tion for all such do­na­tions and taxes. The am­bi­gu­ity of the FCRA is pre­vent­ing small and big In­dian hos­pi­tals, char­i­ties, and re­cently formed groups work­ing in rural ar­eas to bring in life-sav­ing equip­ment like oxy­gen con­cen­tra­tors be­cause of the du­ties and han­dling charges in­volved. The FCRA as it stands, with amend­ments in Sep­tem­ber 2020, pro­hibits even FCRA-reg­is­tered NGOs to trans­fer re­lief ma­te­r­ial to pa­tients or small NGOs work­ing on a pan-In­dia ba­sis. Where does one go? All that your gov­ern­ment has to do is to is­sue a clear-cut clar­i­fi­ca­tion that FCRA rules won’t ap­ply for COVID-19 re­lief im­ports.
3. Please al­low al­ready FCRA-reg­is­tered bod­ies to do­nate life-sav­ing equip­ment and con­sum­ables to all hos­pi­tals, NGOs and oth­ers in dire need but not reg­is­tered un­der the pro­vi­sions of the For­eign Con­tri­bu­tion Reg­u­la­tion Act.
4. GST must be fully waived at the very first step. Why should small or­gan­i­sa­tions be made to pay taxes from do­na­tions painstak­ingly gar­nered penny by penny through crowd­fund­ing?
5. Please freeze all taxes, du­ties, charges and fees for the next six months, at least.
6. En­sure the smooth trans­port of life-sav­ing equip­ment from New Delhi and other cities to where they are needed most. Wher­ever nec­es­sary, the gov­ern­ment must pro­vide lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port.
7. Elec­tric cre­ma­to­ri­ums must be set up within the next two months by the Union gov­ern­ment di­rectly or through the state gov­ern­ment in all dis­tricts of In­dia.

FCRA pro­vi­sions must be re­laxed for NGOs with stan­dard reg­is­tra­tions un­der sec­tion 12AA and/​or 80G of the In­come Tax Act and they should be al­lowed to bring in re­lief ma­te­r­ial in kind with­out even a day’s de­lay.

Your Home Min­is­ter, Health Min­is­ter and Fi­nance Min­is­ter have lost their voice in these cru­cial times. Modi Bhai, the buck stops at your door, whether you like it or not, whether your ad­min­is­tra­tion both­ers or not and whether your party be­lieves this to be true or not.

An­ar­chy seems round the cor­ner. The time to act is only to­day. In­di­ans across the board are un­for­giv­ing and his­tory is not likely to be dif­fer­ent.

Hop­ing against hope,

Jag­mo­han Singh
Ed­i­tor, The World Sikh News