THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2024
Sujay Gupta, @SujayGupta0832
The doctor from Sanquelim, who is the Chief Minister of Goa, has got caught in a cleft stick over this handling of the Coronavirus crisis. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. But it’s a situation of his own making - by his propensity to listen mainly to out-of-state bureaucrats rather than some sane on the ground advice, coupled with simply following what the some of the States, especially Delhi has done.
While his frustrated near outburst, when he threw his arms in desperation after declaring that shops selling essential items, that people are on their own and have to fend for their safety, it’s a measure of how ill-prepared the State - and this is important - and its people are. Goa is probably the only State which appears literally helpless in the Coronavirus vs hunger battle.
There have been angry outbursts against Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant, even memes of what the late Manohar Parrikar would have done during this crisis and blog-posts filed with expletives essentially concluding that he is unfit to govern. While a judgment on this is perhaps a little early in the day, it suffices to at the very least say he hasn’t come out with flying colours and there are reasons for this which must be duly recorded and debated.
At the same time, since the battle is as much about we looking after ourselves as the state providing us with basic amenities, the public display of touch and feel jostling, anger in the crowded markets, throwing all caution to the winds, with men moving back several light hundred years in the theory of evolution to become the primal hunter is just scary.
Sacks of potatoes in Mapusa were snatched by some people, shopkeepers were abused, the outpouring of humanity in the markets of Margao after the 100% closure of markets was lifted and a store in Margao again where the owner was gheraoed by the people all stuck to each other, were some of the base instincts that came to the fore. On Friday people were buying vegetables at a veggie stall in one of Salcete’s villages, coughing, sneezing on each other, each sneeze a ticking Corona time bomb.
This indeed is a golden invitation to the virus to do a dance here, preparing a pitch for the virus to play. It’s a leaf out of a manual of what not to do, the scenes on the streets of Goa were almost suicidal. But yet again they were scenes of desperate people and those with hungry kinds or elderly parents starving.
This is not a debate that can be settled by black and white answers. Couldn’t’ people who can really survive a week more without having to rush to the bazaar have waited a wee bit, leaving supplies and space to those who cannot afford to stick up for three weeks. They naturally could.
Could the State have created a situation to prevent this desperate outburst? Yes, by a little tact, maturity, and sagacity.
To analyse this, we must begin not from the time the State was pushed into a lockdown mode by the Prime Minister for a trial run for three days which included a customary applauding session for India’s health workers. Chief Minister Sawant closed down schools, malls, and pubs but not the Shigmo processions leaving it to each Shigmo committee to decide if they wanted to go ahead i.e risk the lives of thousands. Most did by the way. Secondly, if the Prime Minister of India had not had some strong words with Chief Minister Sawant, expressing surprise, how a Doctor Chief Minister could allow campaigning and elections for the two districts, for positions that are merely decorative, we would have had a full-fledged election process in Goa. Mind you for the Zilla Panchayat elections, you have the whole of Goa voting enveloped with the Coronavirus.
Therefore a legitimate frustration at people exposing themselves to the virus by being callous about social distancing and making a beeline for the markets, with the nervousness of a someone caught in the throes of a food riot should be seen in the context of the same government allowing Shigmo processions and Zilla Panchayat elections, even as cases and deaths were being reported in the country.
Meanwhile, if the sight on Friday morning in parts of Goa resembled that of floodgates being opened and the surge of people like water gushing forth in the direction of the local markets, it is legitimate to ask who closed the floodgates and why. And this is a call Chief Minister Sawant took against the advice of many senior BJP functionaries and former MPs.
The advice given to him was on the following lines and this is straight from those who handed out this advice to the first-time Chief Minister. Keep the public distribution channels and government ration shops, Sahakari Bhandars open as usual, encourage people to stagger visits to shops and have a limited number of people go in. Then, get the panchayats and councils to set up temporary outlets with basic vegetables, fruit grains, etc. Most importantly, allow the bigger supermarket and department stores that have staff to do deliveries on orders placed over the phone and payments done online to avoid delivery people coming in contact with customers while accepting payments at their doorstep.
At the same time, some prominent stakeholders in the retail shopping space had indeed given out of the box solutions to use technology to create a smooth order and delivery mechanism for a class of people who use e-commerce. There was no response from the government for over 72 hours and still counting.
Now these suggestions should have been paid heed to at the beginning of the first lockdown, if not earlier. The government should have had the foresight to understand that a complete lockdown was in the offing based on experiences of other countries and prepped for this. The planning can’t start after a 21-day lockdown has been announced. There was time to put such mechanisms in place even earlier because the virus has not hit us suddenly. The last-ditch attempt to put together a semblance of a mechanism collapsed. Phone numbers made public to call for essential services by the Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) also crashed, a clear sign that different wings of government and other private stakeholders were not working in unison.
Compare this to just one piece of action in Bangalore. This is a tweet by Bhaskar Rao (IPS) of the Bangalore police “Called a meeting of online, e-commerce, food, medicine, groceries, vegetables/ fruits, animal products delivery aggregators at my office. One representative from each agency may come. We promise all cooperation, please come”. And when there were tweets from a local, of police getting highhanded outside the city, Bhaskar Rao tweeted to the person that he would immediately speak to the head of that district and get this sorted.
Contrast this with Goa. Delivery boys of a major multi superstore were roughed up, abused and beaten up. Some were harassed, some shops shut down by lathi-wielding cops.
In Pune, there are heart-warming pictures of squares drawn in chalk outside vegetable vendors and people standing on them maintaining good distance.
Mamata Bannerjee, Chief Minister Bengal, led from the forefront going to the markets, coaching people how to draw squares in from of stores at a distance, with she picking up a stone and drawing them herself.
In Delhi, all stores delivered home with no complaints about the availability of essentials.
No chief minister of much bigger States, cutting across party lines (Karnataka-BJP, Maharashtra-Shiv Sena, Delhi-AAP and West Bengal-Trinamul Congress), with populations ten times and more of Goa has raised his or her hand expressing anger and frustration and leaving people to their own devices.
The lack of coordination and each lapse of ensuring smooth delivery of essentials, built up pressure among the public which ultimately led to the chaos, which could prove to be fatal - yes fatal - if the virus spreads through the community. We are very close to that if not already in that stage.
It took senior BJP organisation leaders and others holding ranks of cabinet ministers, coupled with serious opposition from the Congress and the Goa Forward Party to the Chief Minister’s handling of the situation to finally allow the markets to open. But these decisions need a little more all-round thinking and management than say, for example, putting the light switch on in the room after putting it off. In Lucknow, Tirupati and some other places including Delhi people stand a distance of more than a metre. The space outside and in the markets is marked with chalks for people to stand in. Post which entry into markets is regulated. We are not even comparing this to Italy where there are staggered timings based on the age of shoppers. The elderly get the first slot from morning to midday. Goa too could have used the age-wise timing segregation with people having to produce ids before entering shops.
Meanwhile, social distancing is an obvious tool to fight the virus but commonsense distancing is not. The tsunami of people, lunging towards vegetable shops and grocery stores had people who had to depend on small purchases for a meal or two, many of them earned on the run, bought and cooked on the run and waited for their next day's labour to eat again. Many of them are migrants, each a critical vertebra in the spine of Goa’s manpower force on the paddy fields, on fishing boats, in bakeries and construction sites.
In Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced Rs 5000 to each construction worker to tide over this crisis as their livelihoods have been hit. Kejriwal has also set up night shelters with healthy hot food for the homeless but open to virtually anyone who needs a hot meal.
At the same time activists like Harsh Mander has started a countrywide initiative to get funds to feed the homeless and daily wagers.
We cannot work in silos. While Dr Sawant despite his best intentions must accept the criticism when due since he is the Chief Minister. It is time to cut across party lines form a multi-party and civic society task force give specific under health, food and supplies, social distancing monitoring, contact, medicine supply, etc.
Moreover, he must open up the supply lines as well as ensure that distancing and decency are both maintained. The responsibility also lies with the people who claim to be one of the most evolved in this land. This evolution needs to be displayed proudly and not crushed under the strains of a virus.
